Ken's 5th Anniversary

On January 14th Ken celebrated his 5th Anniversary with Fortify.  Technically he works for HP- Fortify since they got bought out a few years ago.  I can't believe the crazy ride we have been on in the past 5 years!  This is actually pretty momentous for Ken too because he has never worked for the same company for 5 years, 3 years was his previous max.  

To celebrate I took him out to lunch on the following Friday to the Cheesecake Factory.

In the past 5 years Ken has had 3 different positions: Principle Software Engineer, Principle Security Consultant, and now he is Solutions Architect (Engineering) for the Runtime Platform and all of its solutions.  He's done each job for about one and half years, but he'll stay in his current one for probably as long as he is with HP.

The things he loves about his job are:

• Working from Home and having lunch with me everyday.
• Flexibility in his schedule (like a spending a month in Cancun, Yay!)
• The Technology, he really loves the Runtime Platform.
• When he visits customers and he sees them get really excited about his products.
• That his VP lets him do his thing with very little oversight.

The things he hates about his job are:

• Documentation- He hated writing in college and it has just gotten worse.  Thankfully he has a number of people now he can get to write up stuff for him or to put together slides so he doesn't have to do as much.  But he still always has something hanging over him that he has to write down and he is always on conference calls.
• Agile Programming- He's not held to the Engineerings schedule and processes because he really just prototypes things when he actually does program for his job.  But the process bugs him and he misses the days of being in a startup where they accomplished way more with less engineers in a shorter amount of time.
• His companies attrition rate.  He is on his 4th VP (his direct boss).  Thankfully they have each gotten more and more supportive of his products.  But it's stressful to lose a great boss and awesome engineers.  Currently he is frustrated because the marketing guy he had been working in-depth with for 6 months just left the company and Ken didn't get any of the materials he had supposedly been writing for him.

Our family has been blessed to have Ken work from home these past 5 years.  It has meant the world to our children!  Ken got a job offer 6 months ago from a company here in Austin, even though there would be a substantial increase in pay we really couldn't justify him taking it.  In fact when we told our children about it our boys were very upset and began to cry.  They love him being at home as much as I do! 

I really appreciate all the sacrifices Ken has made for our family.  He has forgone promotions and career paths so that he could stay home and be around more for our family.  He has to work harder and smarter to make his remote presence as effective as if he was in the office.  Ken doesn't just hole himself up in his office either when he is working.  He talks to us throughout the day even if it is just a couple of minutes here and there.  Whenever our kids get home from school they come into his office and tell him about their day (at least if he doesn't have a conference call:).  We interrupt him all the time but he never gets mad at us.  In fact it's the opposite, his eyes light up when we do and he always has a smile and wave even if he can't talk at the moment.  There are so many touching times when I have seen Ginger crawl up in her Dad's lap for a cuddle while he is talking on the phone, he'll hold her for 10 minutes or so while doing business as usual and then she will hop off and be totally happy.  I also love that he gives me a kiss every time I leave to run a simple errand (often he walks me to my car too) and when I get home.  

I admire him for working so hard, he is always under a ton of pressure.  His light weeks are usually around 60 hours (you don't even want to know about the heavy weeks)-- which probably isn't very different then it would be if he went into the office.  We just don't have to deal with the commute and Ken often tells us how if he was in the office he would be interrupted more by the engineers or whoever with dumb chit-chat but instead he can be interrupted by the people he loves.  It also helps that he works early in the morning, when the kids are sleeping, or extra hard on business trips so he doesn't have to as much when he gets home.  

I couldn't imagine raising teenage boys (or teenagers in general) without Ken telecommuting.  I was at a playgroup and a mom who had just moved to the area was telling me how she had chosen her neighborhood and how the high school has a lower pregnancy rate than ones down south near where her husband is planning to work.  He will have at least an hour commute each day, their children are small right now.  I was thinking to myself that to lower the pregnancy rate of your teenager then spending an extra two hours a day with their father at home would do it so much more effectively than living in good school district.  Rose loves it when Ken has time in his schedule to pick her up from the bus stop.  She will run as hard as she can to meet him and when they collide in a hug he will swing her around in a circle so that her legs fly.  It's so sweet!  Then we will walk home together with Rose in between us and we'll swing her by her arms.  Moments like that are priceless!