From Sunny Spain to the Emerald Isle! The Nigel Anderson story
I’m English but spent 14 years in Spain, living close to Amit, which is how I came to end up starting work at OTGS a year ago. We have similar-aged children who were at school together, and we all became great friends. Last year I relocated to Ireland with my family (my partner is Irish), but settling in has been a slow process. There is a housing shortage here and it has taken a long time to find a house, but last weekend we finally moved into our new home, in County Wicklow, about 45 minutes south of Dublin.
It’s a house in the countryside with lots of land. That is something entirely new for us, as we have never even had a garden before, and suddenly we have to think about getting animals such as sheep for grazing the paddocks, about planting trees and growing fruit and vegetables, and about where to put up a basketball hoop. I have a view of the countryside from my office (I have an office) which looks a lot like the Yorkshire countryside where I grew up, and couldn’t be more different than central London where I lived and worked for about 14 years before the move to Spain.
Change isn’t always easy, but it beats life becoming stale, and my experiences have brought me to a position where I feel very lucky.
Have you always been involved with web developing?
My first job was working in a computer retailer back in the days of Commodore Vic-20’s and Sinclair Spectrums, where I also did some programming work and wrote a game for the C-64 published by Commodore. My career-proper was as a professional economist, working in finance, before I spent a spell writing screenplays, and then becoming a freelance web developer, which is what I was doing when I joined OTGS.
What is involved in your role?
I’m first-tier support in Toolset, which is an enabling tool that people use for all kinds of projects, and which means facing a very varied selection of technical issues, for which you need a broad understanding of web development, and of WordPress in particular.
You don’t always need to know how to do something, but you do need to know how to find out how to do it! I’ll often solve a client issue because I know what to google for when they don’t.
You need to have a good ear to understand what the client is actually asking (they are often unsure themselves) and a good voice to communicate your answers with clarity. I had some very demanding bosses during my time in finance, and their tough love instilled in me a keen eye for detail and exacting standards.
Perfection is not always possible, nor even desirable, given that it comes at a cost, but it depresses me seeing sloppy or lazy work.
Working from home, how disciplined are you?
I don’t set an alarm, I instinctively wake up shortly before 7 am (comes from getting old), and if I do wake a little later and my day gets off to a delayed start I think that’s no bad thing. I grab a cup of tea and get straight to work. The very first thing I do is check the state of the queue to know how urgent things are, and then I start taking new tickets. Next, I review what’s happened overnight in terms of team communications and responses to existing threads.
This is all usually when I’m still in my pyjamas, and when I get to the point where I need a break I shower and dress. Yes, there have been times when I have made it through an entire day without getting changed because of being particularly busy! At times like that, the queue can seem a bit relentless, so it’s great when there are opportunities to inject some variety into the day.
I also work on Toolset documentation, training, and mentoring, but all such asides are queue-permitting. The customers can’t be kept waiting too long, and it is often frustrating that it’s not possible to set aside time for other tasks. The queue is the bread and butter of my role, but it can be a demanding and unforgiving master.
So what’s next?
Having just undergone another major change I’m looking forward to getting on with this next phase in my life. I love the outdoors, and now I find it in abundance outside my front door, and I’m really looking forward to making the most of that. I like carpentry but have never had a proper workshop until now, and aside from some necessary jobs around the house, I want to get the kids involved in some projects, like building a mini-fort and a medieval siege engine to hurl bags of flour at it. Maybe.
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