When I joined Greyhound back in 1996, as an IT developer, my plan was to stay for a year and then move to some cutting-edge development company. Greyhound was not the sexy development shop that I had hoped to work for.
Now having worked there for 25 years, I have nothing but fond memories of the challenges, opportunities, and people.
Joining Greyhound
I’m pretty sure everyone knows what Greyhound is. This has been a benefit, never having to explain to people what my employer does. The problem has been convincing people I am not a bus driver. Why would Greyhound have any IT needs? As it turned out the technical opportunities were thoroughly abundant and sexy.
Key Projects and Technological Milestones
I was initially hired to “retire the mainframe.” The mainframe was used for several key business processes including dispatching and managing the fleet. Being young and aggressive, I was sure I could knock this out quickly. Digging in and realizing the complexity of a national network, ensuring DOT compliance, union rules, and having a bus and driver available was a challenge. I became obsessed with accomplishing this project. I quickly realized this was a multi-year project, hence my one-year plan was quickly dashed.
This ended up being a very large, sexy, and evolutionary project for Greyhound, leaving me hungry for the next big sexy project. Thanks to the economy, getting the big sexy projects approved became a new challenge. With my ability to understand technology, work with the business, and present thorough and convincing business cases, I was able to keep the projects flowing. Projects included implementing e-commerce (greyhound.com), implementing mobile phone sales solutions, implementing mobile phone driver applications, as well as implementing a data warehouse and moving to the cloud amongst several other projects.
Navigating Ownership Transitions and New Opportunities
Throughout my tenure, Greyhound was purchased by new parent companies a few times. Each owner presented different opportunities and challenges. The most recent purchase was by a German company shortly after the pandemic. This was a technology company with several existing systems. This proved to be another sexy project that even included international travel.
I was an integral part of the operational integrations and was excited to manage the integrations and development teams. The business relied on me to help them understand and trust the new systems will meet their needs. I architected the integration to protect business processes unique to Greyhound. Some systems were too cumbersome to replace and really had no application for European operations. This included the core dispatch and operational systems I developed 25 years ago, still in use today.
So, the not-so-sexy company can have some sexy projects, providing several years of rewarding and challenging work. I have since moved on from Greyhound feeling confident I left them in much better shape than when I joined.
