Employee Spotlight: Get to Know…Tom!

This is an Employee Spotlight our wonderful communications team did about me this week here at Stryker.  I guess some people don’t care much about these, but I’ve always found them to be a great way to learn about your coworkers.  I am told mine was a lot of fun to write & compile, and that I provided enough info that they could write two of them!

Tom Busch, Technical Lead

Check out that crazy curly hair!

Connectedness

Learner

Relator

Achiever

Adaptability

If you ever get to know Technical Lead Tom Busch, one particular characteristic of his may stick out to you. “I’m 6’8″ and, usually when people first meet me, they mention it to make sure I don’t forget!” Tom uses that height to his advantage on the ice. “I play ice hockey year-round in a men’s league in South Bend. I’m also a huge Detroit Red Wings fan!” Off the rink, Tom is a six and a half year Stryker veteran who has moved his way up from software development at Instruments to his current role. “The tech lead is something that’s been around for a while in the IT industry, but not here at Stryker. One of my personal goals this year is to define this role and help others understand how incredibly useful it is to have in the organization. I don’t have a typical day. Usually my week consists of two days packed with meetings and conference calls and three days with time to get work done. I spend a lot of my working time sorting out fixes or new features for the various software applications I am involved in, and then working out different ways to implement those fixes and features.”

Tom sees many advantages in working at Stryker and being part of a global IT team. “As much of a pain as it can be to get hired here, I actually really appreciate the scrutiny I’ve seen in the hiring process. It means we really do have the pick of the litter for employees here and we get a lot of good, quality results because of that. Actually one of the biggest advantages for me and people like me is that the career path for technical people is finally being expanded. Prior to this, I had a concern that we’d have a difficult time keeping technical talent if the highest level they could get to without being in management was ‘senior.’ Now, we’ve got technical leads and we’re working on enterprise architects – as well as various levels of those fields. I think it’s great. We’ve got really good people who we worked hard to acquire in the first place, so let’s do everything we can to keep them!”

Tom has plenty to be excited about in his personal life as well. “I married my wife just this year on September 18, 2011 (two days before I turned 30) and I moved in with her (my house will be for sale soon in Niles, MI, if anyone’s interested!). She and I are doing great! My two dogs (a Siberian husky and shepherd mix) and her cat, however, are still learning how to cohabitate!”