I am officially “between jobs” since this past Wednesday was my last day of work at Information Builders.
Way back in 1998 I was a junior in college and looking for a summer internship. I stopped by Yeshiva University’s placement office to browse through their Big Book of Jobs. I sent out my resume to all reasonable places for jobs in web design and programming.1 I sent out about 20 or so resumes, and the first callback I got was from a place I haven’t heard of called “Information Builders.” I remember the sensaiton of exhilieration at the interview. In fact I was unsually confident because the way they put it I shuold come in to see if I wanted the job.2 When I got back to my dorm room after the interview, I had a message on my machine with the head of the department apologizing that they forgot to formally offer me the job and asked if I was interested. Naturally I accepted mostly because it was the first thing that came along.
Since then I had been working at Information Builders off and on through smikha in what turned out to be a very mutual benificial relationship; they were happy to have me and I was happy to come back.
I’m not sure how other companies work, but in Information Builders so much depends on your department. Mine happened to have been generally relaxed with several talented people. Given the relatively small turnover, most of the department has been there since before I started initially.
The point is that even though it was necessary to move on, it still wasn’t easy.
So as a parting give to the company (in addition to the Krispy Kreme doughnuts to the department) here’s a farewell hakarat hatov gogglebomb for the industry leader in business intelligence and enterprise reporting.

1. Keep in mind that in 1998 web design was not terribly sophisticated and neither were the design tools: either you knew how to code HTML or you didn’t have a web page.
2. Also remember that in the time of the internet boom the job market was in favor of the techies.