Week 4: Wait, who are they?

Hello again!

Every time I tell someone that I work for Vigilant I get the question: who are they? I am sure many of you here also have that question and to answer that question is the goal of my post today. Vigilant is a defense contractor that focuses on cyber security. They receive contracts from the DoD that give them X dollars to create some sort of software. The two founders of Vigilant, Mike and Dustin, worked together at DARPA for a few years before deciding they wanted to pursue the idea of creating a business. Mike has 40+ years in cyber security so he handles most of the development aspect. On the other hand, Dustin has an MBA so he handles the majority of the business operations. Together they have created a company of four years that currently employs around 20 people and is growing quite fast at this point.

Although Vigilant is growing quite fast at this point, everything isn’t perfect. Vigilant is a lifestyle company which brings about complications when looking for employees. The employees don’t have set hours and don’t have to come into the office if they don’t have any meetings that day. The only requirement is you report to meetings and work 40 hours a week. I personally love it, but many people have a hard time with the lack of structure. Due to that, Vigilant has to spend a great effort searching for employees to meet their heightened workload. My job is a byproduct of the effort to meet the heightened workload with heightened employment. Vigilant hopes to use their intern program to reach out to college students with the goal of turning them into full-time employees once they graduate. Most importantly, hiring former interns avoids the problem of Vigilant hiring someone who shortly quits because they can’t handle the work environment.

Per usual I would like to close with my favorite part of the week. If I am being honest my favorite part of this week was the end. In the upcoming week we are making a major deployment so this week was one of the busiest weeks I have ever experienced in my life. By Friday I had forgotten what day of the week it was so checking my e-mails and seeing I had an appointment for the end-of-week meeting made me ecstatic. I do feel like, however, this was the week that I learned the most which is all that really matters in the grand scheme of things.

Until next time,

Kyle