The Next Stage - Goodbye Beam, Hello Tag

The day before yesterday was my last day at Beam.TV (a digital asset management company).

Feeling a bit sentimental, I took one last look at the PC, Desk, and Chair that have served me for so long, and strolled through the noisy cold server rooms, and empty dim-lit boardrooms. It had then finally hit me that I’d actually been there more than three years, and that I was leaving.

To say that I’ve learnt a lot would be an understatement, and the experiences I’ve had there have taught me a lot for the future.

Working there was my first full-time job that had “normal” working hours, as I had been working mainly shifts as either a Programmer or Systems Administrator at my previous jobs. So in terms of communication and soft skills, it was the first time I would be interacting with and having so many people rely on me. At first, I thought just being friendly with everyone would help make communicating with people easier and in terms of a friendly relationships things were fine, however, on the flip-side it made it so hard to get work done and communicate things across. I did thoroughly enjoy all the extra SA (sysadmin) tips and hardware schoolings I’d picked up from a particular skilled but eccentric Systems Administrator there. And more than anything, communicating and presenting myself to others was the most important skill I gained.

With all the skills I’ve picked up, I hope to better myself and take on bigger challenges, facing them head on. As a start, I’m starting a project outside of work, and have already started thinking of various projects I can get myself into.

One thing I’m really excited about, and of course am looking forward to, is my new DevOps position at TAG WorldWide, which if I can be frank, I cannot wait to start after my holiday!

It really is a different role altogether, and is very hands on, mixing both schools of Systems Administration and Development together. More than five times during the interview process they commented on the job being ““challenging” and that I’ll be in the deep end from day one, which is awesome! The points that really excite me is that I’ll be writing OSS tools, dealing heavily with monitoring, deploying with Chef/Puppet, developing in multiple languages and on multiple OSes, and will have the opportunity to be exposed to so much more, and to top it off they have more projects going than resources, and that really fires me up.

So what more can I say, Goodbye and thank you Beam. Hello and let’s get going, TAG.