October 31 was my last day at PeopleSoft. I gave my notice in August and took some personal leave starting in September. I can’t believe that after 6+ years, I’m no longer there. And, I guess since Oracle bought the company in December 2004, I really should start saying “Oracle” instead of PeopleSoft. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss it a little already. But then again, I’ve been missing PeopleSoft ever since the takeover. There were a lot of reasons why I chose to leave Oracle, but first, let me describe the reasons why I chose PeopleSoft to begin with.

Fate?

I was a CSC major at Cal Poly, SLO and I LOVED my classes. I loved coding. Language didn’t particularly matter, and always seemed like the harder classes were my favorites. I got good grades, but since I also swam for 4 years, I sometimes had a difficult time devoting all my energy to my classes, and certainly didn’t have time or energy for CSC or coding interests beyond my classes. After my junior year, a consulting job with Deloitte fell into my lap. It wasn’t ideal, but it paid a lot, so I took it. After doing that job for two summers, I knew that I didn’t want to work for a consulting firm; I really wanted to be a developer; I really wanted to work at a company whose business was software.

I saw PeopleSoft’s job posting, and it sounded decent, but it was for a job in their internal consulting group, and I was determined to avoid consulting. However, PeopleSoft’s job was much more technical than your average consulting gig, and since there was a whole software company attached to that consulting group, I could transfer into something more technical if I didn’t like it. I figured I’d apply anyway and see what happened. Unfortunately, I didn’t get an interview! Since it wasn’t a job I wanted, I forgot about it. A couple weeks later, I was waiting for another interview at the career center when someone from PeopleSoft came out of the door and asked me if I was their next interview. I replied that no, I wasn’t, but I’d gladly take one if he wanted to look at my resume. He looked at it and said, “Wait a minute… you’ve got consulting experience AND a CSC background?!? And we didn’t give you an interview?” They found an interview with some free time and gave me a five-minute interview. PeopleSoft invited me up to their headquarters for a second interview.

A Second Look.

I drove up to PeopleSoft’s headquarters in Pleasanton, CA for my second interview. This still wasn’t a job I was that interested in, but I wanted to hear more about their consultant training program, which they said would include time internally working with their development, tools, and technology teams. When they told us more about the job, I was interested. When they told us more about the company, I was hooked. The consulting training program would last about 9 months and could include experience in several areas throughout the company - including development. Their theory was to find areas of consulting that you enjoyed, and immerse you in them. If I like technology and development, they would put me there. This was a stark contrast to Deloitte (and from what I can telll, the rest of the Big 5). Big consulting firms are more focused on management training, not technical training. And they’re more political - organized around the partner system. But most strikingly was that they constantly put you doing jobs they needed you to do, even if it involved skills you didn’t have or tasks you really didn’t enjoy. They always said “If you don’t enjoy this, or if you’re not good at this, that’s an excellent reason to do it - you need to become better at doing things you’re not good at or don’t enjoy.” Not PeopleSoft. Their theory was “We want you to be happy - we want you to do the things you’re good - We want you to do the things you enjoy doing.” I liked that.

There’s Something Going On Here.

A lot of companies - especially in 1999 - talked about their culture. As far as I can tell, PeopleSoft was telling the truth. Now, the company wasn’t some sort of holy grail and the job wasn’t for everyone. Many of the people I started with left within a year to pursue other interests. But I don’t think most of those people were really cut out for tech anyway - they were in it for the money. And in 1999, the San Francisco area had lots of buzz and lots of money. But I was fascinated by PeopleSoft. One of their core values was Fun. Another one was People. They treated their employees with respect, and even had a company band. At the same time, they seemed to hold their employees accountable - it wasn’t just a party environment. The company treated employees with respect, and expected employees to treat the company and its customers with respect. I liked that. After my interviews, and after hearing more about the company and the job, I wanted to work there. The final straw was the job offer. It was low. REALLY low. Yes, you read that right! The idea of a huge offer as a thinly veiled excuse for tons of politics, long hours, uninteresting work, and co-workers who are there only for the money was a cornerstone of the Big 5 consulting mentality. PeopleSoft was different. They were honest about how much you could expect to make in the future, provided a very low starting salary, and gave prospective employees the chance to see that it was still worth it. I liked it.

What Happened.

I worked internally at PeopleSoft for about a year. I enjoyed my work and I enjoyed the culture. My biggest complaint was usually that I wanted more challenge, harder work. After that, I started consulting in the field at clients. I worked at a huge variety of companies - GKN Automotive (Roxboro, NC), Boeing (Seattle, WA), HP (Grenoble, France), Genentech (South SF, CA), Albertson’s (Boise, ID)… and several others. I enjoyed it, but as time went on, and as I started doing more technical team management and less hands-on, I stopped enjoying it. I missed the technical work. I missed coding. I was tired of large projects. I chose PeopleSoft in part because of its astounding culture. Over the course of 5 years, a new CEO, and tight budgets, some of that culture had evaporated. But PeopleSoft was still the same company at heart and I liked it. But I was always working onsite at clients… clients whose styles, culture, and technology I didn’t enjoy. I was working at companies that I wouldn’t have chosen to work for. I became more and more disconnected from PeopleSoft.

I took some leave in 2004. During that time, I thought about leaving. I thought about culinary school. I thought about other tech companies. But after talking to several friends at PeopleSoft, decided I enjoyed the company too much to leave. Plus, PeopleSoft was just started to work on some pretty major changes to its technology, starting to use more AJAX-like web interfaces, and the founder returned as CEO. Times were about to get very interesting and I wanted to stay.

Oracle

Then, in the middle of my internal interviews, Oracle successfully took over in December 2004. The takeover put all my internal transfer hopes on hold. I decided to ride out my current project for a year until the dust settled and then try to transfer intnerally at Oracle. Over the course of 2005, though, I realized that Oracle was not the company for me. First, their applications just aren’t as good as PeopleSoft’s. As we slowly migrated out of our own software and into Oracle’s, I was angry at a company that would make us switch from something with so much more functionality and a better interface into something so lacking in functionality and difficult to use. Second, the culture at Oracle didn’t seem to respect employees as much as the old PeopleSoft. In the end, if I wasn’t into my current job and also didn’t want to transfer internally, why was I there? So, I left.

What now?

This posting is already WAY too long, but I can’t end without describing what I’m excited about. One thing I didn’t mention earlier is that I did all my college course work on a Mac. I’ve always enjoyed Macs and always admired Apple’s ability to make simple, powerful, stylish, powerful, useable, and powerful products. Throughout college, I always insisted on doing my CSC projects on my Mac - and doing the extra work necessary to get them functioning on Unix or Windows so I could turn them in. I enjoyed developing on my Mac. When a course spent half the quarter building an app in Java, and the second half building the same app in MFC, I asked to do the second half in PowerPlant. And that’s where I’d like to head now. I’d love for Mugshot or other future projects to turn into employment somewhere doing Mac development. But most of all, I’m using it as a learning tool. I’m reading documentation and code every day. I’m writing code every day. I’ve watched most of the WWDC videos. I haven’t learned this much so quickly since college. Right now, I don’t think I have enough experience to get the job I really want, but I plan to immerse myself in the technology - starting now - and see where it leads. I’d love to end up at Apple. Only time will tell.