I honor integrity and justice.  It’s part of who I have chosen to be.  And as a part of my attempts to come to closure with my recent job change, I have devoted some time this morning to expressing my gratitude for the people who contributed to my thriving at Verizon, both by their examples, and in our professional interactions.

I present to you, my words about Dante Pacella:

Dante Pacella is the full package.  In my time working with him, I have come to characterize him as a brilliant and long-sighted engineer whose memory for detail is incredible, and whose ability to integrate those data into systems is, to me, simply stunning.  He also navigates negotiations within the company bureaucracy with incredible skill.

I was in the Systems Integration Testing group when I worked with Dante, and every experience with him was an immense privilege.  He produces the best and most detailed test requirements that I have ever seen, which incidentally also demonstrated his deep understanding of the systems we were evaluating for deployment, and an understanding of how to be concise by focusing on fundamentals.  He was the spiritual author for many of the best tests that I ended up automating and building upon.

I can never possibly repay Dante for everything I have learned from him.  It’s impossible.  And that’s some serious praise.  But I come to work with an active mind and hopefully, that at least makes me worthy of that privilege.  Thanks, Dante.

And my words about Jim Koskulitz:

Jim Koskulitz is a man that I credit directly with my thriving at Verizon.  Under his management, we began an initiative to systematically automate repetitive and time-consuming testing to make the entire process more efficient, more consistent, and to leverage non-working hours.  

This had been attempted by managers prior to Jim.  Jim made it a priority and gave me and a couple of teammates a lot of freedom and guidance on how to go about building it.  These are important things, as is the time risk involved in possibly having project deadlines slip.  It was a calculated gamble and it paid off in big ways for Verizon, and for me personally.

I would like to thank Jim for his leadership and his continued inquisitiveness and attentiveness for the half-decade or so that I worked with him.  He’s a great technical contributor and a damn good manager.