Ask and you shall be given
During my yearly review with Brett, I mentioned that it would be beneficial for both engineering and marketing teams, if i could go over to our US branch at sometime. It would help the engineering team in Brisbane to turn around most of the support cases quickly and give the marketing team a technical perspective of the product. Brett took my suggestion very seriously and before i knew it all the arrangements were made for me to fly to San Francisco for 2 months. Honestly, i am still getting over the shock of hearing this from Brett.
So it has been 2 weeks since i arrived in the US. First week was a bit of a struggle to get used to the life style. Having to drive on the wrong side of the road is pretty daunting. I did drive armoured tanks in Singapore Armed Forces with the left-hand drive. So having that experience surely helped to switch my thinking. Also falling sick while having serious jet lag is not very fun. But where's the fun in life without a challenge?
US office seems to appreciate my presence. I spend a considerable amount of my time educating Victor and Michelle. In fact James is finding it useful to come over and clarify some of the technical questions customers have raised. I deal with alot of the pre-sales issues here as compared to working in Brisbane. That's probably the only notable difference in my role as a support engineer in US.
Life in US has not been all work. I have a very good friend, Rishi, who lives in San Francisco. I knew Rishi for more then 8 years and we spent an awful lot of time partying and playing cricket in Singapore. So I made use of the opportunity to catch up with him and also check out the night life in SF. I must admit, I am not a fan of big night outs, but having trouble sleeping because of jet lag definitely helped to stay up until very late. So the last couple of weekends I was out partying and really enjoyed myself… much to the annoyance of my wife.
As a final note I really should thank everyone in Ephox for this fantastic opportunity. I am quite proud to be a part of this dynamic company and looking forward to seeing it rise to even greater heights. Working for Ephox pretty much summarizes my definition of a perfect job.
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Adrian Sutton
October 28th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
It’s great to have you on the team Suneth! Sounds like the guys in support back in Australia are appreciating you taking care of things while they’re asleep.
Choice quote « Andy’s blog
October 29th, 2007 at 4:31 am
[…] 29, 2007 Choice quote Posted by Spyder under work So Suneth seems to be enjoying his visit to our US office, and it works both ways. He’s been teaching them how to handle the simple support cases and […]
Suneth Mendis
October 29th, 2007 at 9:05 am
This arrangement works well for the customers. We almost have 24 hours customer support and 6 days a week. Customers will get replies with in a day and most cases will get resolved with in few days. I guess we will see the results soon!