WOW!!! I Am IMPRESSED By A Government Agency!
Today was first day at CA Dept of Social Services (CDSS). I am completely blown away by the quality of the Lotus Notes / Domino application they have, and particularly impressed by my new “Boss”. She is a middle-aged lady- probably my age, and she was one of the original developers of this app- it has been in use since 1995 and has evolved as each new version of Notes added new features. She is also the backup Notes administrator but manages the whole development and administration team for the “Field Application System” (FAS). Oh, and she has a 20 year-old son that works in the IT department as a MS SharePoint administrator- and they ride the bus together.
The system is used to manage / audit (license is the actual term) the 4 basic types of programs that CDSS handles- Child Day Care, Child Residency, Adult Residency, and Senior Residency There are about 700 users on the system- 500 “License Program Analysts” (LPAs) and 200 “License Program Managers”. The system is very robust and complex and will take me weeks just to figure out, but it is very similar to audit systems I worked on for Bank of America and Disney.
I am so excited about having a technical boss- this group and application is such a fine-tuned machine compared with the Notes group at that “big Mall company” I recently worked at. It seems like a great environment to work in- they really care about the people and worry about things like making sure you get a 30-min break every 6 hours worked, etc. Most of the staff developers are in late 20s or early 30s and are eager to learn.
The other cool part is that the Notes group is basically autonomous- we don’t have to answer to anyone about changes to system, upgrading servers, etc. They have 15 production Notes servers, and 2 just for development and testing- all managed by my boss- I tell you, she is amazing. I’m getting to develop in Notes version 8.52- the latest, and I don’t think that the “big Mall company” will be going there anytime soon as they still can’t finish the application on version 8.0x (it is OVER 2 YEARS LATE).
I am so looking forward to work- and to being able to come home to take White Dog for a 15 minute walk whenever I feel like it. Life is so good right now….