I had a brief stay as a Senior Technical Project Manager at <kpe> in Los Angeles from September 2000 to May 2001. <kpe> is a New York based "dotcom" company. <kpe> was originally created to become a digital studio company. Then came the crash of the dotcom world, and <kpe> revised its business model to offer digital services (Internet consulting). Working at <kpe> was valuable because it taught me about the Internet environment. I left the company after graduating with my MBA.
I worked at J.D. Power and Associates from August 1998 to August 2000, and finished my career with the title of Director, Database Systems. During my employment at JDPA, I was attending The Marshall School of Business' evening MBA program. I enjoyed working for the company because of my interest in cars, the challenges of building a database infrastructure from scratch (data warehouse project), and the very limited travel.
Redwood Shores Offices (HQ)
I was at Oracle Corporation from August 1995 to August 1998, working as a database consultant in the OLAP (Oracle Express) suite of products. I finished my career at Oracle with the title of Principal Consultant. Working at Oracle was an interesting three years. I learned many specific technical concepts, and this complemented my prior consulting experiences with general technology implementations. One experience that the most interesting was leading the first West Coast implementation of an Oracle Express Intranet application at a client site.
For one year beginning in 1994, I spent my professional life at some smaller, less well-known companies such as IRI Software and Manhattan Associates. Although the amount of time I spent with those companies is small, they still had a big impact on my life. IRI Software owned the OLAP Express technology and Oracle bought it in late 1995. At the time of the purchase, I had been at IRI Software for only one month before becoming an Oracle employee. Prior to IRI Software, I was working for Manhattan Associates. Manhattan Associates had an impact in my life in that it coincided with my move to Southern California. They paid for all my moving expenses and appeared to be a growing and aggressive company. Early in 1995, Manhattan Associates informed me that they were moving to Atlanta, Georgia. Hence the move to IRI Software.
St. Charles, IL
Me and Uncle Arthur
After graduating from Wayne State University, I worked at Andersen Consulting's (now Accenture) Michigan Practice. I worked at the consulting company from May 1991 to May 1994. Perhaps it was the brainwashing that the company does, or the fact that it was my first post-undergraduate job, but AC left the biggest impression in my mind that no other company has yet come close. I didn't enjoy the long hours worked or the relatively lower wages, but I really appreciated working with sharp and motivated individuals, the methodology, experiences from consulting engagements, the travel (initially), and unlimited potential for advancement. I have picked all types of professional and technical skills from working at AC. In addition, I traveled to all types of places such as Chicago, San Francisco, Detroit, Fremont (MI), New York, Jackson (MI), Schaumburg (IL), and of course, St. Charles (IL). Not all the locations were exciting places to visit, but it comes with the territory in IT consulting. Still, after three years as an "android", I grew tired of the lifestyle and knew I wanted to relocate to Southern California.
Young engineer in training
During undergraduate life, I spent two summers at Ford Motor Company as an engineering intern in the E4OD electronic transmission calibration department. I really enjoyed working for the company, and I learned much about working in a professional environment. My work consisted of helping the calibration engineers, programming EPROM chips, writing documents and attending a lot of meetings. Once, my team went to Arizona for hot weather testing on the vehicles, and that is where I received my first taste of corporate travel. It was a fascinating time, and I was hooked.