You know, I don't think I've ever properly described my coworkers (or maybe I did and I'm going senile). Not that I know all that much about these people in the first place. But I need to fill up space and in lieu of setting up a web site this is the place to do it. I've been here for almost four years and surprisingly not that many people have left. We had some training yesterday and everybody had to say their names, which group they were in, and how long they had been working at Oracle. Out of about 30 people only about eight had been working here more than a year, and half of them were from our group.

We'll start with my team, who's official name I don't remember. We deal with the low level telephony switch layer, using various middlewares to convert switch calls and events to one standard API that higher layers can use. Simon Lau leads the team. An MIT graduate, he has worked for Texas Instruments and he was hired about half a year after me. He works long hours, he's very smart and remembers almost everything, great communication and organizational skills. Simon wrote all of our basic Java code and a good deal of the C++ code. In short, Simon is a key person in the group.

Sushant Agarwal has been in the team longer than me, though that's cause I was stuck doing Reports for a year. Sushant worked in Oracle consulting before being hired here. He has worked with the Aspect and Alcatel switches and is generally pretty good. One knock on him is that he is not very thorough -- he tends to make quick fixes and doesn't go the extra step to make sure the fixes can be applied to other cases. But everybody has their shortcomings and Sushant is still pretty good. He is working on his own web site which I've seen and it's quite nice.

Aravind Dongara was hired after I joined the team. I think he's a recent graduate and certainly has the least work experience of us four. He's worked on the IVR (Interactive Voice Response) Integrator and has worked on the Lucent and some other switch. Very good and fast, self motivated and has lots of potential. Annoying habit of not commenting code changes (Sushant is almost as bad but at least he tags code changes). But another good developer who's learning fast.

So the key to any team is the team leader, and Simon is a good one. Sometimes I worry about him because he does work ten hour days normally and much longer frequently and he is swamped. Somehow I've become the first sergeant in the team. A lot of times I'm helping Sushant and Aravind and they tend to come to me first with problems, which is good since Simon is overworked. And I do tend to get the "harder" projects, though I wouldn't call them that myself as I do have weaknesses that would make other projects harder for me.

Speaking of myself (my favorite subject), I'd characterize myself as the grizzled veteran. I've been in the group the third longest, after Dave and Prasad. I have no illusions of ever being a manager -- I'm just not suited to handle people and I don't like communicating with others. But I've been here a long time so I know a lot of weird intangibles that aren't in the job description. Just like any other organization, there's a sort of unstated culture and way of doing things that's not written down. You learn it by being there and from others.

I still wouldn't say I know that much. Especially in terms of technical skills. I know some Java, C++, Oracle, NT and various things like that but I'm not an expert at anything. Sort of a jack of all trades, but master of none. And I really haven't been working that much in the last year or more. Seriously, I may at the point where I'm just so much dead weight on the group and I should be replaced with someone who's hungrier.

A word on job titles. Simon is a Development Manager, the rest of us are Senior Software Developers. In Oracle those are about the right levels, though naming conventions are not standardized. I used to be a Telephony Developer and I think Michael was a Telephony Engineer. In general the levels are Developer, Senior Developer, Technical Lead, Manager, Director, Vice President. It's not all that clear to me and I'm sure I could change my title relatively easily (it just requires manager approval).