About Kenny
Your life condensed to 102 words, well maybe a few more now?
Grew up in a small town in Oregon, normal pair of parents, sister, dog and cat.(oh yea, lots of horses and some cows) Did my four+ years at Oregon State, got out on good behavior with a BS in CompSci. Worked at small time modem manufacture (Supra), was still there when they became a big time modem manufacture. Supra gets bought by big time video card company (Diamond) and watched fun company become un-fun company. Jumped to 3Com in Chicago, had a blast and met lots of cool people. Decided Chicago just wasn’t going to work and jumped to Seattle and Microsoft.
Learned lots at Microsoft, shipped Windows 98SE and Windows 2000 and got promoted. Did horrible thing, helped shipped Windows ME. Did good thing and helped ship Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Along the way got promoted another couple times and then bailed out of the management path. About the same time climate inside Microsoft changed and slowly became more toxic. Eventually left group I’d been at for seven years and went to even more fucked up group. Rode out on a rail….
Along the way I met Rosie and feel in love. After taking three months off, I ended up back at MSFT as a contractor. Had great experience of being in a group who really appreciated me and at the same time couldn’t hire me. Around this time our little man Isaac came along. I eventually left the contracting gig for a full time thing at Amazon. Some where in the middle there our wonderful son Isaac showed up and then all of a sudden he was seven 15.(almost 16 and now driving)
Amazon has been good, not so toxic and yet still a big company. Managers don’t yell at you and really mean it when they ask how your doing. I also found a great group, where the actual work doesn’t matter so much because they make it fun. I now work in an all Linux environment and still doing my thing.(plus I get to have a mac!) Some where along the way I ended up back on management path, got the fancy title and everything. But along the way, I figured out I really don’t need to be managing people to get what I want, so I’m back to being a individual contributor and still having fun.