>> My name is Mike Bishop, a software engineer.
Currently, I'm a senior manager so I oversee software development at Nuance Communications
so we do healthcare technology, speech recognition applications.
So it's usually beginning of the day, getting together with [inaudible] teams.
I have people reporting to me multiple states, couple of different places overseas.
So we get everybody together, understanding what the day is looking like, what people need to do,
anything that's in their way in terms of impediments.
From there, it's, you know, may be reporting to management, current status of things, otherwise,
it's usually a lot of technical discussions on your current road map
of products that we're developing.
Lately, there's been a lot of work with integrating in company we bought.
A lot of cross functional type of meetings with customers,
we deal a lot hospitals, doctors, things like that.
So we get to talk to them about software at their sites and see what kind
of issues they have and more meetings.
When you start out, so it's normally, you know, a junior role where you have a background
in some programming language or technology.
You will usually take guidance from a lead.
So you will have daily tasks which comprise a larger application
but you're normally responsible for just a small subset of things.
It's very specific tasks.
From there, you know, as you get your experience when you grow, learning things that can evolve
into more of a midlevel lead role where now you're responsible for higher level looking
at an application, deciding how it needs to be built, you know,
what technologies you would use, may be overseeing junior developers at that point,
mentoring them, helping them, you know, picking up new things.
From there, it would be, you know, more of a principal or may be an architect role
where you're involve in more than one product and you're trying to make decisions that
or make sense in an enterprise level, so across multiple applications,
whether it's technologies or road maps.
From there, you were going to a management role.
Again, it's more of a multi-product scenario where you're always overseeing multiple teams,
dealing with outsource resources, you're dealing with third party companies
that are may be supplying equipment software to you.
A lot more interactions with upper management in terms of reporting status, budgeting,
road maps for, you know, long-term, short-term.
From there, you know, it's up to you where you want to take your career,
whether it's a technical route or you stay at management or, you know,
more of a business route where you may be you go to a larger consulting role.