For our next Staff Spotlight we talk to Ben, our Head of Implementations. Before Stimulus, Ben worked in Insurance. In his spare time, we loves to try new foods and is constantly being kept on his toes by his toddler. His favourite thing about Stimulus life is the fact that the team are so supportive and motivated.
1. 10 years ago, what did you think you would be doing now?
Ten years ago I worked in an insurance call centre doing fraud screening on their technology claims. It was all people ‘accidentally’ damaging their 10 year old laptop that they ‘totally used every day’ and definitely didn't just buy from a guy at the pub yesterday for a tenner hoping to get a top of the range new one (I should point out that there were plenty of genuine claims too, just some of the dodgy ones were pretty obvious).
It paid the bills but frankly I hoped to be doing pretty much anything else. I was aiming to be in technology but was perhaps thinking of being more on the desktop support side as it fitted the skills I already had. This was shortly before I discovered Salesforce and that changed a lot of things for me.
2. What quote do you live your life by?
JFDI – Just ****ing do it. Too many projects and ideas in our lives are run in to the ground by analysis paralysis. There is a time and a place for that for sure, but in many cases you’re better off making a decision and getting started and then iterating and improving on it rather than waiting until you are certain; that way you never do anything. I’m not going to buy a new house just because I can’t think of anything better to do but so many low risk and low impact decisions end up getting bogged down in the same process as the big ones.
3. What’s the one thing you couldn’t live without?
Food, and not just because I actually physically couldn't. I love trying all sorts of new things and have a massive addiction to gourmet burgers. We’re really in to Greek and Turkish food right now and I’m lucky enough that my wife is an excellent cook and is always making delicious things for me to try.
4. What do you like to do in your spare time?
I don’t really get much spare time. I have a very excitable 18 month old who is in to everything. Climbing over and on to furniture and over the safety gates on the stairs is her latest thing. Beyond that I am a PC gamer – almost anything from Paradox interactive used to swallow days of my time when I had it. When I get more time I’d like go back to Eve online too – pretty much a year disappeared in there. Also, keeping with the geeky vibe – Linux stuff. I run a few Linux servers at home with a totally unnecessary collection of things in a docker swarm just because I like to tinker.
5. What are you listening to/reading/watching at the moment?
I do quite a lot of long drives so audiobooks are my thing. Right now I’m on the latest book in“The Expanse” series by James S A Corey.
6. What’s your previous working experience?
I did quite a few things early on but the last 10 years or so have all had an IT slant. I have worked in IT contract management and projects at a local government and then did 5 years at a Salesforce app exchange partner before coming to Stimulus to try to get broader experience of everything Salesforce can do.
7. What’s your favourite thing about life at Stimulus?
It’s got to be the team. People are so supportive of ideas and motivated to get things moving, it really is a place where you can get things done.
8. What are you excited about during the next year at Stimulus?
There’s a lot going on at Stimulus including a number of opportunities to get involved on some large and very interesting projects. As the company grows there’s a lot of opportunity to learn new things and work with new people. As the new guy, I’m looking forward to getting stuck into all of this.