Reboot

After many false starts, I've decided to start posting up. I moved abroad to work around a year ago, and I'm only just at the point where the job and life have settled down enough for me to start contributing again.

Working for the same company for over a decade has its advantages and disadvantages. However, for me most of the advantages came back to one thing - comfort. That's OK, but I did want to try something else before I ended up too comfortable. So, rather than taking the small step to try another company nearby I took a giant leap with the offer of a job on the other side of the world. Nothing iterative or incremental here.

The national cultural differences are obvious and immediate for anyone to see - some better, some not so. I was looking forward to a change and I certainly got it in these respects. However, the company cultural differences are drastically different - well, this is where the comfort factor I had up until now had mostly come from after all.

Obviously, some of a company's cultural differences are shaped by the country's culture and attitudes. Of course they are, but not everything. After working for a software services company for so long, I am now working on a large managed services contract on behalf of my new employers. Still service offerings right? ("Same, same" as I've heard often out here). Well yes and no. The difference here is that this managed service contract has effectively replaced what I know as a "bodyshopping" contract.

And this is where the massive diverge in culture exists. Believe me, the differences between what we are trying to do and the inherited culture of this team is enormous. It should be pointed out that we have and will have a lot of things to learn in return. Its certainly not all one-way. I hope to interlace some of my posts with highlights of some of these differences, and what we are trying to do to change things for the better as I go.

But hey, I wanted out of that comfort zone right?