And now for something new...
Today was my last day in the office at Symantec, where for the last 2.5 years, I’ve been a Senior Principal Site Reliability Engineer for the Norton e-business team.
We’ve supported the current infrastructure, built tools and automations, performed a minor data centre migration, and started another major data centre migration.
This is basically what you might call “moving to the cloud”; or taking the servers that are currently in legacy data centres and moving them into a dynamic data centre (think AWS, Azure, etc.)
The reason I’ve left Symantec is to start up a new business with my co-founder, Julie O’ Donnell odonnellonline.ie. It’s called One15 and it’s a digital and marketing strategic consultancy firm. We also build digital solutions that we market ourselves.
Julie and I worked together at Publicis D Healthcare 3 years ago. She will be the CEO at One15 and I will be the CTO, or Chief Technical Officer, responsible for all things tech: the apps, websites, automations, chat-bots, servers, tools, tech team, technical strategy, etc.
Julie and I worked extremely well together at Publicis, where I was the lead developer and she was a company Board Director and Strategic Planning Director.
That’s how we know our relationship will be able to withstand the pressures and stresses of a start-up. We’ve both decided that working for other companies, and not building a long-term future, is not what we want to do.
We want to be able to work on the projects that we are passionate about, as opposed to working on something that is driven by someone other than ourselves. Obviously, we still work on projects for clients, and try to create solutions that are of value to our customers, but we want to have much more control over that.
When you work for someone else, there’s always uneasiness, at least for me; you never know what is driving the direction of the company and the action within your organisation. That is why our goal is to have more control over what we do day-to-day.
The great thing about the relationship Julie and I have forged is that I am very strong technically while her expertise lies in the marketing sphere. I understand infrastructure, software development, and how digital and marketing intersect from a technical perspective. Julie, on the other hand, understands how marketing and the digital world intersect from a marketing perspective. That makes it the perfect partnership.
Although I will be sad to no longer work with the people in my office and on my team globally from Symantec, I’m very excited about starting this new chapter of my life. I expect great things.
I know there will be struggles and that it will be harder some days than others, but I also know with a long-term view that we will do well because we are investing in our own future. On those days when it’s hard to get out of bed, it will be a bit easier remembering our ultimate goal.
Please get in touch with either Julie or myself at One15, if you’re in need of advice or assistance with anything digital or marketing related. We would love to help.
~ Dave
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