Well, after a six year run at Sun Microsystems, I finally decided that there were greener pastures elsewhere. I left Sun on June 2, and promptly started work at Pixar Animation Studios on June 5. What with a new daughter and all, I figured it would be a good move in terms of future popularity, and more importantly, it will put me in a happier mental state, which is important.
So far, I've just about completed my TD (Technical Director) training at Pixar -- I get to learn how to animate, even though I'm really working in software engineering. My initial assignment is in the QA department for the new animation pipeline tools Pixar is developing, so it's nice to get some comprehensive training on the last version of the tools (we're learning the version that the studio is currently using for the upcoming film Ratatouille).
In my week plus at Pixar, I've witnessed first hand what a great place it is to work. Not only are there the perks that everyone always reports in the press, like a great cafe, food and drink, movie screenings, et al -- the more important aspect of the experience to me is the people. Pixar is chock full of people that are leaders in their fields. I look forward to learning everything that I can about software design and engineering from the software teams I'll be working with.
My goal is to move from QA to software engineering within the next year or so. Although what I did most recently at Sun was primarily software design and implementation, not QA, I figured that coming to a new company with a massively complex new tool, being in QA would be the best way to learn how everything works. One can only build with a solid foundation of knowledge, so that's what I aim to "develop" over the next year. Of course, I always follow the mantra of "if it's worth doing once, it's worth writing a tool", so I'm sure that there will be other development going on within QA over the coming months.
