Engineer Manager
Resume:
This brief page gives a
little background on my career and my interests, as well as some ideas
about what kind of work I am most interested in and the sorts
of job titles I could assume.To
just see my resume,
at the end of this page.
To
get a sense of what I really want to do in my next "job", move down
this page to .
To
see
samples of my writing, jump
to the link at the end of this page.
After years in
various roles
in software development (for details, see my ),
I am looking to change direction a
little towards positions that integrate the various
things that I do best, and that I enjoy the most, or positions that
will stretch me a little but which I think I could do well with my
skills, interests, and mind set. But let me digress
a moment...
Career
Overview
I wanted to
work with computers before there were many college majors in it, but in
my first jobs, as much as I loved programming and creating tools, I was
struck by the low quality of information I had to work with and the
difficulties in accessing it, which started me thinking about those
problems and refining my writing skills. I also found
pleasure in seeing my “customers” satisfied and
putting aesthetic touches on my work, and found many ways to use my
highly organized nature. But I was increasingly frustrated by
the problems of building quality software.
This
motivated me to get a Masters degree in software engineering,
a great educational experience and a time during which I came to
appreciate robust tools and features for advanced users, as well as the
value of good conceptual models. This led to many
years in the Unix industry, working on feature requirements
(one way to make better software), tools (power, models), configuration
management & administration (organizing), and documentation
(improved information and access). I became a document
management person probably before the term was generally
used, and was quick to adopt hypertext tools; and knowledge
sharing, usability, and simplicity became top
interests. I greeted the Web with delight, as a platform with
exponential potential for improving information access, but the devil
is still in the details, be it a web site or service, a software
product, or a user guide: features, the quality of
the information, the design of the information, usability,
simplicity. Getting these right is increasingly the
basis for a better user experience for any type of software
or information product and what I want to focus on.
Where
to Now?
Looking back, I
see that I am usually drawn more to the process of improving
the software products and interfaces that I
work with than to the creation of them from scratch (alas, there is
no end to the software, and consumer products, I use regularly that
could benefit from significant improvement!). With information,
though, I love to both create it and improve it,
and to make it accessible, to make it really work for the customer.
I think my strengths
would really shine in a
setting where I can exploit my drive to constantly improve information, software, and
the usability of interfaces, and
where I had a role that combined work in product feature requirements,
information access and design, document management, technical writing,
& usability and where creating a radically improved information
experience for customers, both internal and external,
is a high priority. Doing so for very large target
audiences would really get me fired up.
So, some roles and situations I am looking for include:technical/leadership role in
any organizational effort to provide better, more usable, more complete
product/consumer/technical information to customers, and to
improve their access to that informationenterprise document
management: document manager, requirements analyst,
administrator, consultant, systems/sales engineer, product
manager, technical lead, trainer, technical writera (very) large effort to
build customer knowledge bases by taking advantage of the power of hyperlinks into PDF documents
using permanent URLs (e.g., a consumer electronics
manufacturer who wants to make all product manuals more helpful,
usable, and accessible)systems
engineer, sales engineer, business analysttechnical writing of various
kinds: technical information targeted to a technical
population, product evaluation, product reviews, technical Op-Ed, end
user documentation, internal organizational documentation, developer
documentationproduct management for
software, web services, or consumer electronicstechnology research
& analysisproduct and interface
usability, evaluation, and testinginformation manager,
information services, information designprocess improvement,
customer advocacy
A
few
writing
samples from both inside and outside a work context are
available for reading, and links to other more technical, work-related
ones are available.
My resume is available in 3 formats:
file
(.pdf)Word
file
(.doc)text
file
(.txt)
NOTE:
I am not
available for relocation from the
northern New Jersey / New York City area (unless you have my dream job).
My references are also available:
as
a PDF
file
(.pdf)as a Word
file (.doc)as a
(.txt)
Timothy GILL
Maplewood,
New Jersey
***-****@*****.**
.
Contact this candidate