A Year at PlusNet
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A Year at PlusNet
As of today, I've been working at PlusNet for a year. It's been a busy and exciting time for both the company, and myself. It does, however, feel like it's been longer than a year - perhaps this is just because prior to working at PlusNet I was a moderator on the old discussion forums and a member of the PlusNet Usergroup where I was involved with interacting with many of the PlusNet staff before I joined. My first day was interesting, partly because I'd 'upped sticks' and moved from Central Scotland to Sheffield the previous day. I spent some time getting to grips with Workplace (our internal management tool), having HR inductions (and skipping some bits on the Company History etc.), getting Debian set up on my computer and meeting some of my colleagues (those I didn't already know!). This was a gentle introduction to working at PlusNet, which meant I could get down to the hard work after the end of the first week - I think everyone should start with a 2-day first week :) I think the first major event in the year was the announcement at the end of January, that BT had successfully completed their purchase of PlusNet which set us on the road for the rest of the year, culminating in the work that the Development team have been doing with Madasafish. The acquisition hasn't changed the PlusNet culture, and we still hold the same 'Cornerstones' that have existed for a while. One of the great things about working at PlusNet is that each day is varied, even when working on big projects, as you never know what else is going to crop up throughout the day. I've been involved in both big projects and small projects throughout the year, and the majority of them are all just as enjoyable to work on. I've also been involved in running sessions with new starters on the Business Culture. One of my first small-ish projects that I was involved with was the changes to our internal problem management tool (apparently not the easiest system to work with) so that we could publish our priority problems on the portal. This turned out to be a great project for getting used to the way that development happens at PlusNet, from the initial DDD (Detailed Document Definition) to the actual rollout (at 2AM) - my colleagues were particularly helpful in providing me with help and advice. The first major project I worked on was one that I think, as a business, we wished had not had to happen which was the replacement of our @mail webmail solution with the Squirrelmail solution. Although the manner in which we had to do this was unfortunate, I was impressed with the team work that was shown across the business to enable us to get Squirrelmail rolled out in the space of a week. Although some of the effects of the incident are still being felt, I think we are now in a better place with regards to security since this happened. The other major project that I've been working on for the best part of this year is the very place you are reading this blog, the Community Site. This has been a massive piece of work in bringing together the discussion forums from the various VISP portals and also providing us with a way of keeping you (the customer) up-to-date through the forums and the blogs. The Community Site is organic and we have plans for enhancing it in the future. The last year at PlusNet has been excellent, I've (marginally) improved my pool skills (I can now actually pot balls occasionally), had a trip up the BT tower, learnt a lot from my various colleagues and continued to enjoy the work. Here's to many more happy and enjoyable years! Colin (PS: We're a great place to work - why not come and join us!)