Roughly 2 weeks ago I finished up my time with the young (as in the average age of the employees) and funky digital agency - Gruden. I can’t believe it had been 1 year and 10 months.
The move is kind of significant point in my working life - as I have finally transitioned from being primarily a ColdFusion developer to something else (but that’s for another post).
It was a blessing to be working with folks at Gruden, made quite a few good friends over there whom I am really keen to stay in touch.
Interestingly, I was kind of stumbled upon the role at Gruden. At the end of 2009 - I was burnt out quite badly from my previous employment that led me to taking a few months career break. I was trying to cross skill myself in Java and Ruby on Rails at that time and wasn’t really looking for a pure ColdFusion role.
However, my ex-colleague was interviewing for a .NET role with Gruden and he mentioned me to Gruden. Long story short, I was offered a 3 month contract position. And yes it is a ColdFusion contract role - but I thought it’s only for 3 months and I have heard good things about Gruden before.
After 3 months - we liked each other and the contract became a permanent gig.
I can confidently say that they are one of the the best guys to work with if you are a ColdFusion developer. The ColdFusion applications that I worked at at Gruden are well architected - with best practices in mind. OOP all the way through - with Mach-II, Reactor and ColdSpring as the foundation. It was very refreshing to me as developer - that I didn’t have to convince and fight people about the benefits of OOP (as what I had done at my previous jobs).
It was interesting to me as well as I had the opportunity to be the lead developer in some projects, doing lots of analysis, costing (which I don’t particularly like), training and mentoring - AND handling support issues. It was full on - but I learned heaps in the process.
I will miss the bi-weekly development meetings (when we take turn to present on interesting topics), the soccer competition, the coffee, the scenic Circular Quay, the ping pong and the pool games - and the people of course!
So bye for now (professionally). If you are looking for ColdFusion gig - I do recommend get in touch with Gruden, they are a bunch of creative, honest, friendly and hardworking people.