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posted 10/02/07 by Lisa Crounse Creative Writing

One of the great things about the Impression team is our diversity. We have folks from all around the world working on Impression. We also seem to have at least one person who interprets "please answer these questions" as "please approach this as if this were a creative writing project." I'll leave it to you, gentle reader, to determine what Jon's real story is...

Developer Spotlight: Jon Rossen

Q: Who are you and why are you here?
A:My name is Jon Rossen and I ask that question constantly. I find that working on the Autodesk Impression team has given me an appropriate outlet for my self expression. I was quite artistic in school and was told I was a very talented musician. After studying music theory and composition in school I was lead bassoonist for the Cleveland symphony. I found that the rigidity of this format stifled my creativity so I started dabbling in free form avant garde jazz. I formed a quintet called the Jon Rossen Project and toured the world. I did have to switch over to my other instrument which was tenor sax because the bassoon didn’t lend itself well to the free jazz idiom. But after 5 years I found that my creative juices were still not satisfied and I gave up on music; I felt that I had nothing left to say musically. Then I discovered Autodesk software and I liked it so much I became an employee. I find that working on the Impression team is the best outlet for my self expression; there are much more colors, textures, fills and strokes than musical notes.

Q: What is your position?
A: I’m a Quality Engineer (QE) and my main responsibility is to test the software. Basically I get paid for finding fault with other people’s work and then documenting it publically to the team in the form of bug reports. It’s actually a nice symbiotic relationship: The developers create bugs so I can stay employed, I try to write them up in such a way as to not enrage them

Q: What do you do during an average day, or do you even have such a thing?
A: All my days are average; they are an amorphous mass of stress all blending together to form one big lump. My biggest dilemma is how to minimize the level of failure; of not being able to do everything in front of me. The big question is this: Do I disappoint a small number of people greatly, or do I spread the disappointment around to a greater audience so that each individual resents me less? If I make it imbalanced so that a very small number of people resent me strongly, their judgment of me will be at odds with the majority of others who think I am doing a good job. If I spread the disappointment evenly, it may become so faint that no one will even notice it. So, this is my dilemma: How do I prioritize and work well with others?

Q: What has been the most exciting part of working on Impression?
A: It’s hard for me to answer this because the antidepressants that I am taking tend to smooth out my mood swings to such a point that I’m pretty much emotionally inert. My therapist has also encourage me to fight the urge to be exuberant because we all know what the flip side of that is and once you cross that line it’s a slippery slope. Of course if I was to go over to the dark side and express any type of enthusiasm I would have to say it would be over the work that I’ve seen our customers create. They are much more creative than me, and quite frankly I sort of resent them for it; I suppose it is something I need to discuss with my therapist.

Q: What is the most interesting conversation you’ve had with a customer?
A: I can’t remember because I was so boring during the conversation I nearly put myself to sleep. But as a whole I’d have to say that the one common thread about our customers that I’ve noticed is how knowledgeable they are about our software, particularly AutoCAD. I used to consider myself an AutoCAD gearhead; I could recite all the sysvars back and forth along with their defaults. Most of the customers I’ve talked to have a lot of interesting things to say about our software and I have learned a lot from listening to them discuss their various workflows. Lastly, they all seem like nice people and that it makes me happy to have them be so nice to me when I talk to them. Hmmm…and all this time I thought they hated me because of the things they write to me in the CERs.

Q: What is your favorite baseball team and why?
A: I’m a San Francisco Giants fan. The reason? That is probably a question for my therapist. They say baseball is not merely a sport but a metaphor for life. If that’s the case then I guess I’m one of the biggest losers on the planet. I just hope they win the World Series just once before I die but I suppose they will win it right after I die. So, at least I now have an inkling of my mortality and when I will leave this world; it’s an easy formula: (the date of the SF Giants World Series win - 1 Year).



Jon in his native environment.

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