Why are manhole covers round? Part 2.
OK after a hectic night and what is turning out to be a hectic day, on April the 1st here is the second part.
Part 1 here: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/why-manhole-covers-round-part-one-andrew-pritchett/?published=t
I really liked the people including who would become my boss if I got the job, I really wanted the job. I was super grateful to hear I got a second interview, but this time it was one on one with the CIO who liked to have final say on all hires I assume.
So I put on my best suit and rock up to the Rialto in Melbourne, where the Minter Ellison office was. I get ushered into a room and sit down waiting, a few moments later the CIO walks in, honestly seemed like a really smart and nice bloke.
At Minter Ellison at the time they used a product called iManage, I cannot remember the actual name at the time, Filesite, Worksite, iManage, who knows now. Anyway I had absolutely no idea about the software, I had never seen it, heard about or even knew of its existence. There was a completely different product from Novell that was a prototype or pre release with a very similar name.
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The CIO goes, tell me what you know about Worksite, innocently I thought he meant the Novell pre release software, I was super surprised he even knew about it, pretty impressive. So I go on a 20 min technical description of the Novell product what ever it was called, it was a bit of software that synced your documents from your Windows NT machine to a Server with some basic version control and on the server had some search, really basic stuff compared to now but also absolutely nothing to do with iManage. We talked about the challenges syncing and checking out documents, performance limitations, cost, features, we literally had a discussion for 30 minutes, it went really well, he closed out the interview with an offer, not an I will get back to you, rather an actual offer, with remuneration, he did not ask what I wanted, he offered what he thought was fair and it was, I was so happy, two interviews, same week, bad day on Monday, great interview Tuesday and then meeting with Martin on Thursday, I accepted on the spot and he got some paperwork to me on Friday AM via courier. I resigned on the Friday after being at the firm for 13 years or so, which was sad, but honestly one of the best things that happened to me was getting a job at Minters, I made some really great friends, learnt so much from my boss and it was what set me up for future roles, including my CIO role today.
I had absolutely no clue what I was doing.
BUT, I had no idea about iManage, absolutely no clue, when I started my first day a few weeks later, I got shown to my desk and given an Admin password, including Admin to iManage, in fact I think my normal account was an Admin account, logged in, hmmm, can't find that Novell software the CIO was talking about, then I slowly came to the realisation we were talking about a completely different product altogether and I had absolutely no clue about the software, the software I was a supposed expert on!!! Luckily I was a fast learner and my new team mates were awesome, I chipped away, read manuals and asked questions. I am finally pretty good with iManage now, took 20 years and 4 more jobs.
Anyways, hope part 2 was worth the 50 likes.
General Counsel & Company Secretary (ASX & NASDAQ) (but MUCH more than a lawyer) | Corporate, IP, data privacy, tech & commercialization specialist | Connector & networker | Corporate Governance | Non-executive director
2 年Love this story Andrew and having worked with you at two law firms, I think you've done more than OK. I also did have some PTSD when you mentioned the iManage story .... I still think you are one of the best, solutions-focussed IT person I've worked with. Thanks for sharing. ??
Senior Business Development Manager @AdvanceRetail Technology | Relationship Builder | Problem Solver | Driving Success for Clients |
2 年Great story, very enjoyable to hear about peoples beginnings.
Dad x 3 & Product Manager (People and Finance Systems) at Xero
2 年Andrew Pritchett I'd rate you as an iManage user, probably not as good as Richard Freitag or Dean Settinelli though. Kind of reminds me of starting at Griffith Hack in business process management and improvement, I had reasonably good knowledge of (then) FileSite as a legal administrator I thought, but understanding it to support a digital transformation project there was a whole another level (e.g. workspace/folder permissions, document profiling, custom field config., indexing, optimistic vs. pessimistic permissions, folder structure best practice, AND vendor management) and there was so much to unpack. This levelling up happened again at Grant Thornton when (now) iManage had moved to the cloud and we were tackling a cloud document management system integration with Salesforce. My takeaway from your post is that showing up, having a go / willingness to learn and a supportive team culture can get you so far (at GH it was Richard Freitag, Gavin Townsend, Paul Bristow, Barnaby Ling and you of course - still grateful for the coaching and mentorship). Great posts AP - always appreciate that way you share your journey from nerd infrastructure guy to nerd CIO guy with vulnerability and good humour.
Chief Information Officer at Arnold Bloch Leibler | AGSM MBA(Tech)
2 年Can we get another story if this gets 100 likes?
Executive Assistant at Mercer
2 年Great read. Thanks for sharing Andrew. You were always good for a funny story. Kind of reminds me of my interview with the firm we worked at together. In my very first ever interview when I was young and naive I was asked if I knew what a patent was. What I heard was “do you know what a pattern is?” I thought “what a silly question to ask” and responded with “Of course I do”. I was clearly so confident in my response there was no follow up questioning on this. Thankfully, because if I’d answered the question I heard I highly doubt I would’ve spent the next 18 years there ??