JBoss, 2 month update
Jun 3rd, 2008 by sharps
Wow, it’s been almost 2 months since I left Sun to join the JBoss division of Red Hat.
Time for a quick update. In many cases I’m comparing with Sun which is a) a little unfair because they’re companies in very different situations; and b) unfortunately my only reference point. So, I apologise beforehand if this post reads like I’m laying into Sun. That’s not my intention.
Business
Firstly, Red Hat and JBoss in particular, seem to be on a roll right now - every week seems to have bought news of Red Hat’s continued success. First the Fiscal Q4 results, a really successful Java One, then really encouraging reports from Nikkei Market Access, Aberdeen Group, Gartner and Forrester. News like this assuage any ‘job switchers remorse’ 
Technology
One thing that still impresses me about Red Hat is the pace of innovation. Red Hat isn’t a big company and JBoss is still a small piece of the whole but we seem to be punching way above our weight. This is fuelled by constant innovation in the JBoss.org projects. During my short time here; and specifically for JBoss, I’ve seen the following releases :
- JON 2.0 GA
- JBoss DNA 0.1
- JBoss Tools 2.1
- JBoss ESB 4.3
- JBoss Messaging 2.0
- JBoss RESTeasy 1.0 beta
- EAP 4.3 CP02
- EAP 4.2 CP04
- Seam 2.0.2
In addition there are some pretty interesting things going on behind the scenes - eg. EAP 4.3 is starting evaluation for EAL 2+; AS 5.0 and EAP 5.0 are taking shape and OpenJDK in Fedora making progress. One thing I know for sure is that the cadence isn’t going to slow - this summer is going to be busy.
While I’m talking about technology - I should also mention I’m back to being a full-time Linux user (Fedora 9 to be specific). I keep having OS/X withdrawals but so far Fedora has kept me out of the Apple store.
Culture and People
Superficially, the Red Hat culture isn’t radically different from Sun. They are both technology companies - full of smart, very technical people where technology rules. Questioning corporate mandates seems to expected at Red Hat - as it was at Sun - though I’m sure changing them is a lot easier at Red Hat due to its relative size.
Many of the JBoss people I work with share one thing in common - they used to be a customer. Whether, VP of engineering, support engineer or product manager - you’ll find people who joined JBoss because being a customer wasn’t enough. What this means is that there is a huge amount of customer insight in the organization. OK - I’m going to slap Sun around a little - sorry. In the last few years at Sun I saw a worrying trend - hiring people with absolutely no knowledge of the products Sun sells; people who have no interest in understanding how the products worked or what problems they solved for customers. For a product company - that’s wrong. Wrong.
Work Environment
I’m spending about 50% of my time in the office - that’s 50% up on the last 3 years - travel takes most of the rest. The change is not as bad as I thought it would be - my commute to Red Hat’s HQ in Raleigh is about as easy as it gets (typically less than 20 mins, often just over 10). Actually getting fully dressed in the morning before work hasn’t been a problem either. One thing I miss is being able to hit the Gym outside peak hours - my Gym hours are way down currently.
JBoss is probably a lot more distributed than other organizations - I doubt there’s an office anywhere in the world with more than a handful lof JBossians - so phone, mail and IRC rule. Twitter - not so much. Actually meeting people is a pretty infrequent opportunity - Red Hat summit will be the next.
