Today i have had a nice meeting with the people from eChiron, a portuguese software firm where i have worked before. It was just an hour of meeting and talking to old eChirons, as we were called by the direction of the firm, and i guess i have missed them a lot in the passed months, since leaving the eChiron. I guess that i am not the only one, with my experience there, who even after leaving the firm feels some kind of a connection to it. In a contrary to the many other software firms, being at eChiron feels like being in a private firm where people know and talk to each other, which is a good and important feeling for me. Of course i have left eChiron, not because i was not satisfied with them, but because i felt, that professionally i needed to switch the firm in order to achieve better results.
eChiron is a small private portuguese software and managed services firm, which derives itself from the university study group. The eChiron has enjoyed a lot of success since its creation and now it is one of the top 100 portuguese software and managed services firms. I was privileged to work at eChiron for 1.5 years, during which i have learned a lot of great people, and a lot of the have become my good friends, and i maintain the connection with a lot them even after exiting eChiron. I think one of the best things about eChiron, is the environment and the relations between between the co-workers, even if in the past couple of years there have been a lot of critic of eChiron’s relations.
I have worked for 1.5 years for eChiron during which i was responsible for creating and maintaining websites like BMW, IPPAR, CM-Seixal between others. I have also had a very good experience and learned a lot of Oracle database at eChiron, developing a lot of applications in Oracles PL-SQL language and some in Microsoft SQL Server. One of the things that eChiron has started to change in the past months was .NET implementations, which were not too much at the time when i was working there.
The things that i think that eChiron is missing are good web marketing (they had a good professional once, but then fired her stupidly), good designer (same situation, had one very good, but not extended her contract as a cost optimization scheme) and a professional web design.