It is hard to believe that is has been a year since I joined Varrow (over a year actually, I joined last July). This past year has been one of the busiest and best years I have ever had working at any company. I won’t say that this year hasn’t been without its challenges and that this or any company is perfect so I will also mention challenges as well as highlights over the past year. At the end of the post I will mention some of the types of positions Varrow is currently looking for, cause I need help :).
One of the best things about Varrow to me is our Culture. Varrow’s culture here is hard to describe to people that don’t work here. Saying that the company or the culture is awesome just doesn’t justify what it is like to work here. I have been doing some introspection lately on what makes it one of the best companies I have worked for.
Some of the reasons I believe Varrow is a great company to work for:
- The People
- A lot goes into the hiring process here and they are very selective on the candidates which they hire to make sure they will be a good fit for our customers, and to make sure they are a good fit within Varrow. You can have all the skills in the world and not be a good fit, and we can teach you the skills you need but we cant always make this the right fit for you. That fit goes both ways as this job is not for everyone. I talked about that here back in April on Consulting
- I think every employee here plays a role in making it a great place to work but a lot of credit goes here to our leadership team that started this business and continue to drive it to success. Jeremiah Cook and Dan Weiss are both people that foster and build upon the things that I think make this company great and have maintained that even with rapid growth.
- Sense of Connection (in a Virtual World)
- I really feel a connection with the people I work with even though I am remote probably 80% or more of the time. Through regular team building, company events (such as Varrow Madness) and use of Social Media, along with regular calls, Varrow stays very connected and in tune. Local Pow-Wows and random dinner conversations are a regular occurrence here. We often travel in the same areas and find reasons to get together to talk shop and have a good time (Ask AJ Kuftic about joining his Fried Chicken Quest or talk to Jason Nash about guns).
- Evolving (knowledge and abilities)
- Varrow is filled with some very talented folks at all levels, and they feed off each other (not literally like zombies though) and this fosters this constant evolving of ways to stay on top of the latest trends and technologies. There are some very innovative training programs being developed internally for people at all levels.
This video I found on our Varrow Linkedin Page really made me think a lot about these things.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=i1Ux6hDnPPE
Highlights over the past year: (in no particular order)
- Varrow Madness – Annual Technical Conference featuring our best and brightest delivery technical content as well as guest speakers all centered around March Madness. Last year I helped build our Varrow Labs for Citrix XenDesktop delivered on vCloud, I learned a lot from that experience, it was also a good chance for me to share some Citrix PVS knowledge around best practices
- This year Varrow Madness will be in Charlotte on March 20, 2014. Registration is already open for next year, drop me in the referral if you found out through here. The Engineers are trying to beat the Sales team on Registrations
- Oil Changes – Regular company events where we get together to update each other and share ideas and drive internal innovation. These are a lot of fun and we also throw some killer parties
- Company Kickoff– We usually have a big company kickoff at the beginning of the year, similar to an oil changes but Bigger, Badder and stronger (Gentleman, we have the technology)
- Latest and Greatest Technologies – I often get the chance to play with some really cool products such as Citrix HDX 3D Pro to delivery high resolution images for workloads like AutoCad and medical imaging, XenMobile, XenDesktop 7 and more…
Challenges over the past year: (Again in no particular order)
- Travel – Travel here is much better than I have had in some previous positions but still is a challenge as i can sometimes spend quite some time on the road in between engagements. How much I travel varies considerably as sometimes I am at home for weeks and other times I am gone every week but I am home every weekend. I also rarely fly any more (I will miss my Airline status when that expires).
- Keeping Up with the Jones’s (Wait I am a Jones..) – Staying on top of any technology can be quite the timesync especially as new products are released. I push myself in this regard as I try to maintain several areas of knowledge and even develop new ones. This is both a challenge and a highlight. It plays a lot into the work/life balance.
- Spending Quality time with the family (during the week) Weekends are almost always dedicated to the family, sometimes I sneak some times here and there when nothing is going on to work. During the week when I am gone is sometimes hard as I like to put my boys to bed, read bed time stories, even help with homework. A big burden of doing all these things and more fall on my wife during the week and I couldn’t do this without her. She is my rock and I love her very much.
- Growth – This again is a good thing and it can also be a challenge to not only maintain but keep exceeding expectations.
With all of that being said, it has been an amazing year and I feel pretty lucky to have landed here. Varrow is now an extended family for me, and I love it here.
Varrow is hiring.
As I said in the title about “And Oh btw we are hiring”. I did not write this page as a recruitment page but thought I would throw this out here as were growing fast and have needs for numerous positions.
So if you are interested and want to chat about coming to work for Varrow or know someone that might be a good fit, you can reach out to me at pjones@varrow.com, you can also reach out to me on twitter @P2Vme.
Some of the Specialties we are hiring for currently include, but is not limited to just the following. You can also check out our current openings on our careers page.
- Storage – EMC
- Backup and Recovery
- VMware
- VMware View
- Citrix
- Networking
- Project Managers
- Account Executives
