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 Issue 10
Goodbye Senior Developer, hello Technical Director! Angie’s
made the break, and a glittering new career beckons in the beautiful city of Florence.
Monday
I keep pinching myself, and it’s still not a dream. I really am here in Florence (or
Firenze, as we residents call it) and I really am Technical Director for InterDesign A, a
Web design house with an ultra-stylish, pan-European client list. This is my first day at
work, but I arrived in Italy last Thursday and feel at home already. The only downside was
saying goodbye to Pete, which was awful, but he’ll be visiting soon and my contract
includes a long weekend home every month. Saying goodbye to the old firm was much easier -
they tried flatteringly hard to keep me, but I knew this was the right move. I still got a
bit weepy at my leaving do, but Carl and Denny’s cheery ‘sod off then Ange’
card put things right. The next stage of my life starts here.
Tuesday
Our offices are, naturally, right in the ancient centre of Florence between the Piazza
Signoria and Ponte Vecchio, and the walk from the bus stop is like a time-trip back to the
Renaissance. My colleagues are Franca (the boss) and Gina - both native Tuscans - plus
Kate, who’s American but speaks fluent Italian. Despite my job title there are only
two actual board directors, Franca and her mother Rosanna, who’s the company’s
backer. Strictly speaking the firm’s women-only policy (‘men have this
competition thing’) contravenes EU law, but as Franca says, ‘let them prove
it’.
At my interview I was shocked to see them all using Apple Macintoshes,
but as promised they’ve put a proper PC on my desk (twice the spec of my old one)
with a copy of Visual Studio 6.0 ready to install. Florence is so beautiful, and this job
so exciting, that it’s almost unbearable - but I know I’ll cope.
Wednesday
Our client list really is fantastic - a fashion house in Milan, a high-tech engineering
consultancy in Paris and a film production company in Rome, just for starters. Pitching
straight into the deep end, I’m flying to Paris next week (business class, of course)
for a meeting with the engineers, who want a progress-reporting database for their field
staff. When I ask Franca and Gina whether it’s Oracle or SQL Server they shrug (very
Italian!) and say I can make my own decision. I ask whether the client side should be Java
or data-bound Dynamic HTML, and they say that’s up to me too.
I can hardly believe it - in the old place the management would have
spent at least six months squabbling over decisions like that. This is what life in a
cutting-edge, high-tech industry is all about!
Thursday
An unexpected email from Carl & Denny arrives in my inbox. They send their regards,
want to know what it’s like working in a ‘totty-only shop’, and say that my
successor has been appointed. He’s called Ed, comes from a big turnkey house, and
claims to know COM ‘like the back of his appendage’. I mail back that
everything’s great, being men-free is bliss, and that Ed sounds like their kind of
guy. An image of the grim British weather, the grim old office, and the endless grind of
Despatch screen layouts sends a shiver down my spine. Then I look out of the window, see
the sun shining on the golden buildings, and decide to lunch al fresco. On the way there,
I decide it’ll be SQL Server and DHTML. It’s a dynamic decision, from a dynamic
Technical Director.
Friday
Kate asks me for some input on a feasibility study she’s doing. I say that the best
solution is ASP with server-side rules, as it’s an intranet with fairly thin clients,
and query results can influence the layout of response pages. She seems very impressed
(‘Hey, you really know your stuff, don’t you?’) and later I see her talking
to Franca, in Italian but obviously about me as they both keeping looking my way. At home
time Franca invites me for a drink, and we go to a cafe near the Duomo. She tells me
I’ve made a great start, and that everyone’s ‘overjoyed’ with me. I
tell her I’m overjoyed too, and that I think I’m going to love it here. In fact,
I already do. Firenze bella! Angie brillante!
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Issue 10 - Contents
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Issue 1
Issue 2
Issue 3
Issue 4
Issue 5
Issue 6
Issue 7
Issue 8
Issue 9
Issue 10
Issue 11
Issue 12
Issue 13
Issue 14
Issue 15
Issue 16
Issue 17
Issue 18
Issue 19
Issue 20
Issue 21
Issue 22
Issue 23
Issue 24
Issue 25
Issue 26
Issue 27
Issue 28
Issue 29
Issue 30
Issue 31
Issue 32
Issue 33
Issue 34
Issue 35
Issue 36
Issue 37
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