Twenty Years At Sun

Yesterday was my twentieth anniversary, working for Sun Microsystems.

As I've mentioned before, I started at Sun, working from home, and I'm now back working at home. I've seen major changes, both in the products from our company and the industry as a whole. I've had several different jobs within that twenty years, in numerous offices and locations, working for different managers. Good times and not so good times.

Overall though, I wouldn't change it for anything. Sun is a great company to work for.

One of the nice things at Sun, is that you get a gift every five years. The past two times, I've choosen something that both my wife and I could enjoy. This time, I decided to pick something mainly for myself.

In early December, I received an email congratulating me on my 20 years, and pointing me at the website, where I could view the gift choices and select what I wanted. It was interesting to see they had gift links for 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 and 35 years. Hmm. Scott himself will only be checking for his gift in the 25 year slot in a month or two. I guess the company that's providing this service are hoping for at least another ten years business from us.

What to pick. For a while it was a toss up between the Segway and the Jet Ski¹, but in the end I went for the Fuji digital camera. It arrived the Saturday just before Christmas. A great present. I appreciate that this was done early, so I could have it for Christmas.

The first picture I took, was of the other Sun son in my life. More on that in another post. My wife had previously found a copy of Digital Photography for Dummies at a library book sale when we got our last camera, so I'll be reading that in the next few months.

So with twenty years experience of working for Sun (and 31 years in the computer industry), what advice can I pass onto others? Here's some suggestions:

1. Pick your battles. Just like raising kids, you aren't going to get your way with everything. Try to work out what are the really important battles to win, and work on them. Of course, determining that, is a skill in itself.

2. You can catch more flies with honey. If you have a problem with something or somebody else, be nice. Don't belittle. Think of the Golden Rule. Following on from that is, never send an email when you are angry, but hopefully everybody knows that one already.

3. It's not what you know. It's who you know more often or not. I learnt that lesson very early in life when I trained to be a radio disk jockey, but couldn't get a job. So network. Introduce yourself to others whenever you can. Get yourself known.

4. Don't just talk about it, do it. Next time you have an idea you want to get across, don't put together yet another twenty slide presentation. Put together a live demonstration. Create a prototype if you need to. Your audience (assuming you've picked the right people), will be a lot more impressed.

5. Get involved. With the speed the world is changing at, and the numerous directions that technology is going in, if you want something, you need to participate. Join a user or developer community. Help in any way you can.

¹ hopefully regular readers on this blog will be able to recognize my attempts at humor, without having to read footnotes.

[Technorati Tag: Anniversary]

[Technorati Tag: Sun Microsystems]

[Technorati Tag: Life Lessons]

( Jan 08 2007, 02:38:57 AM PST ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [9]