Director of Program Management at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Colin Torretta joined our bare metal cloud team as senior technical writer in 2015. Back then, OCI was a fledgling organization finding its way in a new space—a long way from the world leader it is today. A lot has changed since Colin wrote his first user guide for that early platform, and he marvels at how far things have come.
“I joined very close to the very beginning of the organization as a senior tech writer,” he shares. “We didn’t even have a product back then! It started off as a small internal start-up with this bold vision about what cloud could be.”
Parallel to his career journey is the growth of the Engineering Community at OCI. During Colin’s watch, the community has gone from a simple resource group to a democratic organization that influences policy and supports the careers of thousands of engineers. It’s something that couldn’t have happened outside of OCI’s unique atmosphere.
Startup DNA
At OCI, Colin found the ingenuity and drive of a startup with the funding and technical maturity of a major player. It’s the kind of energy he still sees today.
“We’ve changed a lot in seven years, but there’s still a lot of startup DNA here. There are different hats to wear, interesting problems to solve. If you’re passionate about solving a problem, you can raise your hand—just jump in.”
“Now, we’re 100 times the size—huge customers use our products with some of their most important workflows. Things have changed a tremendous amount, but that culture still exists.”
Sharing values
It was fertile ground for what would grow into the Engineering Community, and its mission to keep those startup values alive. Now, this democratic forum of more than 5,000 engineers helps set the agenda for the whole organization while growing the careers of its members.
“I saw the opportunity for OCI to invest internally. I had a dedicated team of internal writers focused on helping engineers get onboarded more quickly. It got some traction, and I quickly found myself promoted to principal writer.”
He remembers this time as a whirlwind of activity. Each day brought more people to the organization along with onboarding sessions and a need for more complex documentation.
“Welcoming people into the organization every Monday for a few years became a huge part of my life,” he explains. “We continued to grow, and the new hire onboarding classes grew from five people to ten people, 30 people, 50… It was around here that I was promoted to senior manager.”
Culture
Soon, he progressed to director of technical writing where he was responsible for the content programs that powered OCI’s rapid product development. Then, Colin was challenged to take on a greater role in OCI’s overall engineering culture.
“They were looking for a director,” Colin shares. “And there was the opportunity to get directly involved with cultivating and empowering a healthy culture.”
It was a natural fit. Colin describes himself as a true believer when it comes to the OCI mission, and he seized the chance to shape its future.
Full circle
In many ways, his journey at OCI has come full circle. In absorbing and reflecting on lessons from the organization’s early days, he’s well-placed to renew those values into the future.
“In some ways we’re replicating the close-knit network back when we were 200 people in one or two offices working next to each other every day.”
The community is still about forging connections, what Colin sees as the connective tissue between individuals, but now it needs to scale to the needs of far more people and far more complex client needs.
“We started looking at ways that we could bring 10,000 people worldwide together closer together,” Colin explains.
Complex challenges
This meant that OCI was more than ready for the challenges brought by the COVID pandemic. Even during global lockdown measures, executive leadership and individual developers could still solve complex challenges and organizational issues together.
The community also offers participants the chance to practice and build the kind of skills that can’t be learned in the average classroom. The best part is that anyone can contribute. It’s an approach that he’s seen fuel professional success time and again.
“We’re always looking for people, no matter where they are in the organization to help us figure out how to move forward—a willingness to raise your hand and say: ‘I’ll try that out,’” Colin explains.
“That’s not really the sort of skill that you learn in school. You need to be in an environment where you have the support and encouragement to try out new ideas.”
Constant improvement
OCI is built on this drive to constantly improve its offering and take on new challenges. That’s why a democratic structure like the community is vital. Transparent by nature, it allows members to identify and tackle the issues that matter to them. This also applies to the organization’s ever-evolving values around customer experience and improvement.
“The values themselves aren’t immutable documents, these concepts aren’t written in stone. They’ve matured with the organization,” Colin says.
It all adds up to a great experience for employees. This year, the Engineering Community was heavily involved in promoting inclusion throughout OCI. Something a forum approach was ideal for.
“These aren’t top-down things mandated by leadership or mandated by my team,” Colin emphasizes. “We look to the greater population of engineers and see how that can help us to understand how we can champion these changes, how we can support and enable them.”
Commitment
This idea isn’t new, and the forum model has appeared time and again throughout the tech industry and beyond. But Colin believes how it’s applied at Oracle sets it apart.
“Many companies out there have programs similar to the Engineering Community. Although, in the two plus decades of my career, I’ve never seen something like this level of commitment. The scale is unparalleled in the industry. It really shows that OCI recognizes the performance of their people.”
“One of the biggest compliments that that we get is that our programs are the most fun part of the job, but also the part that challenges people to grow the most.”
Professional success
Professional growth and success is a huge part of the community’s mission, and it’s something Colin has reflected on before.
“I think it is important to never get too comfortable. I sometimes joke that when you take a new job you should be 50% excited, 50% terrified! That’s how you know you’re on the right track. If you’re too confident, it might be a sign that you’re going to get bored quickly.”
“One of the things that I really appreciate about OCI is that they’ve really supported me charting my own path here—encouraged me to do things that are a little scary… It’s how I’ve grown. Organizational support has definitely enabled my success here at OCI. And I’ve seen it support the success of hundreds of others.”
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