Before starting my business, Prime 3 Software, I was a defense contractor. During one of my last defense contracts, I found myself in a meeting with upper management as the development lead. During the meeting, the term “resources” had been used to talk about servers at some points and engineers at another. Over the course of the conversation, the term “resources” became interchangeable. I honestly couldn’t tell whether we were talking about computers or people.
For a bit of background, this was a pretty sizable contract. We had a large development staff of over 200. With continuous pressure to release new functionality on an untested platform, we got behind schedule and had only completed our third re-architecture of the project in two years. Additionally, we had a large round of layoffs with about one-third of the developers let go. They were my friends and coworkers — real people who had lives, families and bills to pay.
The conversation in that meeting bothered me because people and computers are not interchangeable. No one will ever confuse a carpenter with a hammer. I couldn’t believe management could be so callous about the people who were giving everything to pull this project together. Clearly, that meeting stuck with me.
At the time, this contract was floundering. They didn't have the right people in positions to ensure success. The requirements weren’t well-defined. All told, this was roughly a billion dollar project. The business spent all of the contracted money and the customer ended up with nothing. By this point, I had moved on. But I looked back at that experience and thought, “you know, I think I could do better.” I could do better than how this company treated their customer and how they treated their employees. After that experience, I started to focus on building a business that values its employees. I wanted to build a better development shop that took our customer’s business as seriously as they do.
Over the years, I learned a lot of lessons from experiences with companies like this one: organizations that I truly did not believe in and did not trust. Ones that were only interested in padding the bottom line.
I tried to incorporate a lot of those lessons into how we do business at Prime 3 Software. Our goal is to build a company that is unmatched in our industry, where people are lined up and excited to work for us. We are building a company around innovation and empowering unfettered employee growth within a thriving business. We are building a company that our customers see as a trusted partner in their success.
Our team at Prime 3 Software has been very successful bringing together my original vision — value your people, and work as though the customer’s business is your business. Our team has worked on hundreds of software projects and cultivated a customer base who are our raving fans. We’ve built some amazing products and we have refused to compromise on quality. I can honestly say that our employees really enjoy their work and being a part of the business we’re building together. I see that Prime 3 Software has a bright future and I look forward to sharing our experiences along our journey.
Want to learn more about Prime 3 Software and our services? Visit prime3software.com.