I’ve always been a fan of training up staff. When I used to work at Reuters I’d say this was my favourite secret job. To have a young person come in new to this great profession and be able to watch them grow and spread their wings, well its just a fantastic thing to watch.
But when you run your own company its a lot harder. You have other things going on, you are juggling 200 balls in the air daily, and sometimes as much as you want to be there for everyone, well you just simply can’t. You have to split yourself amongst many staff, your many customers, your family, and then often lastly yourself. Thats the life of a company founder.
Back in 2012 we decided we needed just some tech savvy people that could help out with the simpler stuff. Not a degree qualified guy who wanted to develop, but someone who could help customers with their shipping configurations, do testing, and with time create releases, demos, etc.
Adam was one of the guys we interviewed. He felt young enough to be my son (which was a little scary!), and had this enthusiasm about him, this energy. What he lacked in technical skills he made up for in passion. So Adam joined us. And to give some stats on him – in the last week he sent 175 mails and assisted 67 customers. He is a do-er. When a member of staff tries his best, well really thats all you can ask.
Today Adam leaves WebShopApps, and onto pastures new. It’s time for Adam to go step out into the wider world beyond WebShopApps and make his mark. I just want to thank Adam for everything he has given us, and I hope we have set him on a path of discovery in this great industry we work in.
What’s important to me is that we all too often only acknowledge the people at the top – the company founders, the best developer, the innovator. But people like Adam really make small business work. We need to encourage these young engineers, to give them our time, because they are the future.