From Developer To Director, Chicago IT Professional Learns The Ropes
For every 10 start-up companies, three or four are guesstimated to fail, according to The Wall Street Journal. Then there's the middle group that breaks even and the latter group that makes a profit. So should job applicants take on the risk of working for a start-up company with an unpredictable future?
There's no clear-cut answer to this question, but there are Chicago professionals who can attest to having faith in a company and moving up through the chains while patiently watching the company continue to progress.
Christopher Rosinski is a primary example of one of those professionals.
He earned a bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering from Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York. However, he didn't immediately work in the digital industry. While working for General Electric (GE), he observed his manager leave to join a start-up company.
Later on, another worker recruited Rosinski to work remotely for that same start-up company - Care Team Connect (renamed Crimson Care Management in October 2013 after being acquired by the Advisory Board Company).
After bouncing around from New York to Connecticut to Maryland, Rosinski finally decided to make the big move to Chicago to be closer to Crimson Care Management.
"I was the fifth employee, not the founder. I started on the ground floor of being just the developer, and now I'm the director of development."
Rosinki runs the development group with a team of 18 web developers. The team's experience ranges from beginners' experience to almost 20 years of web development experience, including two gentlemen who have 15 years of self-taught technology experience under their belts.
But Rosinski still recommends taking traditional technology courses for new and continuing education students.
"I believe my degree helped," said Rosinski. "Not only did it give me my first job. It also gave me exposure to the business side of things. Even though it was an engineer and science degree, I had supply chain classes. I had business classes. It gave me a wider breadth of experience for technology and business, which is how I got to the position I'm now in."
In addition to business courses, tech volunteerism is his suggestion to improve a graduate's resume.
"Get involved in the community. It's something that managers and recruiters are looking at nowadays. It gives you a chance to see how other companies are using new types of technology."
Shamontiel L. Vaughn is a professional journalist who has work featured in AXS, Yahoo!, Chicago Defender and Chicago Tribune. She's been an Examiner since 2009 and currently writes about 10 categories on Examiner.com.
