Dylan Greene dot com

Yup, I'm not at webMethods anymore. Surprised? Yeah, me too! Disappointed? Well, don't be.

I've decided to work on my own company for as long as my savings can support it. It should be fun, challenging, exiting, and I get to work on projects I've wanted to spend more time on for many years. I already have many ideas I'm working on, such as TeacherReviews and this yet-to-named blogging and photo album software. Now it's just a mater of focusing and making money.

A very brief personal history: At the end of college I turned down an opportunity to stay with Microsoft to join webMethods back when webMethods was less than 100 people because I believed in the vision, loved the people, and I wanted to learn about working for a start-up. Six years later I have a learning experience that can't be beat by any MBA program. Hopefully I've learned the right things at webMethods to be successful at my own venture. Of course I don't know everything, so maybe some day I might be lucky enough to extend an opportunity to a former webMethods coworker or two to come work for me.

I've received a bunch of emails asking if I need anything. Thank you for being so generous. The only thing I can ask is to make sure we're "linked" on LinkedIn.com so that I can continue to keep in touch with you. If you would like, I would greatly appreciate your "endorsement" on LinkedIn as well. Your honest impression of me and my work will go along way as I look for partnerships, funding, or, if my business ideas don't work out, future employment. I will be returning your generosity by posting endorsements of your work as well.

My LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=566313

Thank you everybody at webMethods for the great experience. I've enjoyed working with everyone, I had a great time, and I hope you continue to do great things at webMethods.

Coworkers blogging include: Benjamin Booth, John Ragan, Luis de la Rosa, and Graham Glass. All of them sit within spitting distance to me, and we all work in product development.

Since webMethods has hundreds of employees and offices around the world, my guess is that there are other webm bloggers that I just don't know about yet.

To see more webMethods buzz: Del.icio.us (bookmarks), Flickr (photos), Feedster (blog search), Technorati (mixture of previous three), and Topix.net (news).

Independent community site wmUsers.com also lists people blogging who use our software, Nifty!

From Ajaxian.com, for my friends at work: :)

You know you're a Java weenie when...

1. Hani viciously biles you, and you publicly thank him for it, calling it "an honor"
2. You go to TheServerSide Java Symposium even though you talk about how much you hate TheServerSide.com. You then try to hide in sessions as you blog that you only go because you like Vegas
3. You feel the need to tell the whole world that Sun has rejected your JavaOne talk, and then further embarrass yourself by claiming its some sort of conspiracy
4. You think its great that we have 45 XML APIs and 938 Web frameworks, claiming that "choice is a good thing."
5. You are excited about SQL AOP (and now SQXML AOP)
6. You complain that Maven is too complex and completely unusable, then gradually let it slip that you've never actually gone so far as to try it out before assailing it
7. You feel the need to blog every time you need a job or are offered a job
8. You go out and spend a small fortune on a 30" Apple LCD and then rub it in everyone's face... multiple times
9. You think that whoever doesn't choose to waste their money on overpriced, underpowered Apple hardware couldn't possibly have the critical thinking skills required to be a good software developer
10. After making a small fortune as a Java author and consultant you turn around and tell people it completely sucks and they should have been using Ruby for the past few years
11. After making a small fortune as a Java author and consultant you throw it all away to learn Objective-C and try to convince the world that managed code is just a fad and that platform marketshare really isn't all that important anyway
12. You are mercilessly rude to Microsoft for years until they send you on an expensive and exclusive "summit", after which you are all warm and cuddly with your new best friends in Redmond
13. You embarrass the entire Enterprise Java community by blogging about how neat it is that PHP wraps CGI state in variables (next blog: "Wow! Perl has this cool $_ variable!")
14. You endorse Struts for years and then overnight change positions and start claiming that it's a huge heaping pile of crap and taking irrational pleasure in bashing Craig McClanahan
15. You think naming client-side browser scripting after a cleaning agent will somehow change the hellish set of horrors that is dynamic HTML development ;-)

Happy April 1st -- Dion and Ben

Today marks my 5th year with webMethods. I started working here right out of college. My job, leading the usability and interaction design (aka: making our software easier to use), is fun, challenging, always interesting, and I'm often ranked as the top player on Halo nights, at least when the guys from IT aren't playing and nobody brings their kids in.