Rocket.Build 2017: Welcome to the Global Village

By on October 23, 2017 in Development, Rocket.Build

Rocket has been around for nearly 30 years, and if you know about our history you probably know that the company started out in CEO Andy Youniss’s spare bedroom outside of Boston. In fact, Boston remained the center of the Rocket universe for a very long time: it wasn’t until 2003 that we opened our first office outside of New England. That was just the start of our worldwide expansion, and today there are more than 1500 Rocketeers all around the globe. This week our Rocket.Build event reflects the success of our efforts to be where our clients and partners are.

Rocket.Build Lab41% of the 138 people selected to attend Rocket.Build are from the US, but fewer than half are based in our Massachusetts headquarters. The rest are from Colorado, California, Texas, Georgia, and other places where we have a presence. And roughly 15% of participants are from our China locations and another 15% come from our Russian labs. That’s pretty good representation from those two countries. We also have people who flew all the way from the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Australia, Japan, India, the UK, Denmark, the Ukraine, and Germany. When I walk into the Rocket.Build lab, I feel like I’m visiting the United Nations!

Why does this global diversity matter? Simply put, it helps our talented engineers and other Rocketeers break out of their silos and work with people they may never have collaborated with before. It also lets people build personal connections with Rocketeers from all parts of the company, regardless of what products they work on as part of their “day jobs.” This is a hallmark of how we work at Rocket, and this week we are putting our values into practice by tearing down the walls that separate us.

It makes us a stronger company, and based on what I’ve seen so far this week, it’s helping us build the products that will drive the future of Rocket.

The following two tabs change content below.

Azeem Ahmed

Azeem Ahmed joined Rocket Software in 2003 as a Software Engineer after having graduated from UT Austin. Over the course of past fifteen years, he has held many engineering and management roles. In his current role as Chief Technologist for Cloud, Azeem helps lead Rocket R&D around Hybrid & Public Cloud, is responsible for Rocket’s Cloud strategy, and leads Emerging Tech Research Group focused on Big Data Analytics & Cloud. In addition to this role, Azeem was instrumental in conceiving the Rocket.Build program – an internal hackathon for Rocket Engineers. He continues to direct that program every year for our engineers.

, ,

No comments yet.

Leave a Reply