William Anderson

Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Semiconductors industry

November 2009 – December 2010 (1 year 2 months)

Self-Employed; Myself Only; Information Technology and Services industry

March 2009 – April 2010 (1 year 2 months)

Privately Held; 201-500 employees; Computer Software industry

May 2007 – March 2009 (1 year 11 months)

December 2000 – March 2008 (7 years 4 months)

November 2006 – March 2007 (5 months)

Concept allowed me to try my hand at sysadmin outwith an Internet business for the first time in a few years. As part of a small team providing support and services to this maritime software company and its clients, I came close to having to jump out of fake helicopters into large tanks of water for training purposes. A wholly different experience to any other I've had so far.

Self-Employed; Myself Only; Information Technology and Services industry

August 2006 – November 2006 (4 months)

A brief attempt at mercenary freelance consultancy work. Donning my best black ninja outfit, I hired myself out to the highest bidders in vain attempts to purchase a 40" Sony Bravia to watch Monkey in upscaled high-def. Sadly, while my ninjitsu was willing, the market was weak. I hung up my throwing stars and returned to steady employment, but I can still detect samurai sysadmins approaching at fifty paces.

Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Information Technology and Services industry

August 2004 – August 2006 (2 years 1 month)

Working at Lumison was something of a dream job for me, as I'd always wanted to work on the coalface of the Internet, i.e. at an ISP. While there, I got to know the guts of a busy service provider, offering email, server and web hosting, co-location, consumer and business-grade DSL (both ADSL and SDSL, via wholesalers and using unbundled loops [LLU]) and dedicated network links (e.g. leased lines, LES).

This was also my first proper exposure to an on-call rotation, giving me a chance to improve my fault-finding and troubleshooting skills and increase my responsibility and ownership of out-of-hours tasks and solutions.

All-in, an eye opener and great fun.

Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Computer Software industry

November 2001 – August 2004 (2 years 10 months)

Working for another startup, I was given a chance to work commercially alongside colleagues who I'd already been working with for months as part of the SmoothWall Open Source Project. During my time at SmoothWall, I worked on diverse projects, including software appliance interface design, system administration, company infrastructure development, and print design for product documentation and advertisements. A great company with great staff, I thoroughly enjoyed my time at SmoothWall Ltd., and I still remain part of the Open Source Project.

Public Company; 10,001+ employees; ATK.L; Civil Engineering industry

November 1996 – November 2001 (5 years 1 month)

In the five years I spent at WS Atkins (now simply Atkins), I rose from humble support monkey through to consultant back to support again. I started working as a support engineer for a part of the business purchased from the NHS, supporting 150 staff's workstations (rising to 250), the LAN and servers. Later, I was given the opportunity to move into a outward-facing IT consultancy group within the company, with our first contract being the very support we were still providing to our previous division. I was then able to experience a variety of consulting roles for large organisations such as Strathclyde Passenger Transport, the NHS and Essex County Council before internal company politics forced myself and my colleagues back to supporting the local business units, managed by a central helpdesk service in Epsom. This shift led me to leave the company, but I'll always appreciate the chances I was given at Atkins.

July 1996 – November 1996 (5 months)

I was one of three web designers at this early, but now defunct, web design and hosting company. While working with clients to implement and host websites, I also worked with a colleague to set up, configure and maintain the office LAN, hosting systems and network connection.