.. well actually I was part of the Swiss national team that once again became a world champion in ultimate spirit, since we won the spirit prize in the mixed division. In the "normal" rankings we finished 8th out of 11. But at least we won the direct game against the only other nation representing the Alps: We beat Austria in an exciting opening match 9:8, even though they then went on the finish 3rd in the overall ranking. In other news I made it back home safely from Brazil, enjoyed Christmas and New Years Eve with family and friends back in Berlin and started my new job today at Liip. Yes, new job and all. The people checking out the schedule for PHP Quebec might have already noticed that I was listed as working for Liip a few weeks ago.

Why did I leave? Optaros was the first time I was employed full time. All previous engagements were either me working part time as a student, me running my own business or me freelancing. As such I had to figure out what I really wanted. Working at Optaros was an awesome opportunity. Number one it took my to Zurich, a decision I am very happy with. More importantly I learned quite a lot about management. There are some really experienced managers and sales guys at Optaros. Its amazing how quickly and efficiently they can figure out pretty good time estimations during a meeting. I also learned a lot about Java and how to sell PHP to Java guys, while also learning to appreciate some aspects of the Java world. I also met a fair number of really top notch developers. I also got along really well with the people at Optaros. I especially have fond memories of by trip to Bucharest, even though we had to work like crazy to get a project done in time.

The reason for leaving was that I during my time at Optaros, being in a bigger company for the first time, I learned that I much prefer having a much smaller core team to work from. Its not necessarily that too many people overwhelm me, its just that with a smaller group of people the roles become more fuzzy and less defined. At the same time decisions can be made faster, because they affect less people. So its easier to get the buy in from all relevant people and mistakes can be rolled back more quickly. Optaros as actually very forthcoming in making many adjustments to keep me happy, but its simply impossible to be what I was looking for given their size of now close to 200 people and more importantly their aggressive growth plans. In that sense Optaros would probably be the stronger career option. But I will still get to work with the people at Optaros since Liip is doing a joint project. I really feel lucky that thanks to my Open Source involvement I have the luxury of being able to chose between two very good options.

Congrats on the new job! :D

Hi Lukas,

that's a good liip forward :)

Sandro

Quite impressive if I may say so.

Adam @ http://www.talkphp.com/

We're sorry to see you go, and happy for opportunities to work with you in the future.

A good mentor of mine at a previous job once told me: "It is unlikely we will all retire from this company - so from time to time people will move on, and we should think of the opportunity it represents for them, not the cost it represents for us."

Hope we'll cross paths again

John

Congratulation on your new job :)

sf @ http://cmsreview.net