New Job: Softonic

This week I started my new job at Softonic.

After three years at opus5 I decided that it was time to move on. I learned a lot in this time and as I like to say, a lot of things I really never wanted to learn. I worked in a great team and wish them all the luck for the future (And in case you are looking for a PHP job, I am sure they are looking for more people).

While writing my 2010 New Year's Resolutions, I came to the conclusion that it is finally time to make a move. I was looking for a company, which is more focused on development and the possibility to learn new stuff.

cafeteria and view

Most people reading this have probably never heard of Softonic, neither had I before the 2008 Barcelona PHP conference. It is a large download portal similar to download.com, which started in Spain and is now in many other countries. The company has 180 employees, with maybe about 50 developers. This makes it the biggest company I worked for so far. They have been voted best employer in Spain twice and provide nice perks like training, massages, free fruits, tea and the like.

A few things made the decision to change more difficult. I now earn a lot less and I can't call myself Technical Director any more. In fact I am not even any kind of team lead, but just a low developer. But I figured I wanted to do more programming and hope there will be opportunities to grow in the future.  And I have to work on Windows again with two tiny screens, which is a bit strange.

Technology used at Softonic is pretty standard, the usual PHP, MySQL and memcached that you see everywhere. They have their own grown framework, which is not to different from what I have worked on at Sanego or guideguide. Some of the processes are a bit strange, for example the revision control system involves Windows, remote X11, Wine and TortoiseSVN. But nothing I can't work around with a bit of Eclipse, git and shell magic.

The first week I spend shaking everyone's hand (really), learn some of the processes, sign contracts, listen to CEO talks. I need to find some good lunch restaurants in the area, which is a bit more difficult then in the centre of Barcelona. I also have to find a way to store my bicycle to work.

For some reason I ended up in the SEO team (opus5 guys will laugh now :-), but in the end it is all just code and I might not be interested in SEO, but neither do I use any download portal. At the moment I don't do any coding anyway, I am still in training and this probably continues for a few more weeks.

So to summarize: all fine, I am having fun lets see where it takes me...