Moving On
Friday was my final day at a job I held for nearly 8 years. Where before I was doing a combinbation of IT and programming for a think tank, now I’ll exclusively be a senior front end developer—which is more in line with the interests and skills I've built in those years.
There are a lot of reason for moving on. Over time, my interest in public policy has waned. It’s still intellectually interesting. But I've seen too many people dedicate their entire careers to advocating for specific policies without success, and that's depressing. Another reason is that I came to love remote work—something that I was no longer allowed to do when my last employer returned to the office earlier this month. I was focused and productive at home, and coming back to the office made me wonder how I ever got anything done in the past. Losing my ability to focus (plus two hours a day to commuting) was not acceptable. The new job is fully remote, so I get to keep working in the way that best suits my brain. Finally, I was growing tired of the IT aspect of my work. IT can be a very deep and interesting field, but my experience of it was more in line with the stereotypical tech support tropes.1 For these and other reasons, it was time to change.
Getting another job where I could focus on programming wasn't easy. Hiring in the tech sector is incredibly broken—especially if you don't have a CS degree and haven't learned all of the data structures and algorithms you need to get past many technical interviews. And I did a lot of technical interviews. Each one was totally unique. They ranged from leetcode-style whiteboarding to take-home projects. And each was unique! Every application presented a new opportunity to be tested in a slightly different way.
And while the work of interviewing was intense and stressful, I also found it weirdly enjoyable! This was one of the signs to me that I really needed to go: the pain of technical interviews was nothing compared to the joy of getting to "talk shop" with other practitioners. I was lonely as one of a small handful of technical people at the think tank.
Today marks the start of two weeks of funemployment before my new job begins. I'll be taking some time to go home and see Mom, followed by trying out a lot of front end tech I haven't touched before. I can't tell if I'm more nervous or excited. Is there a difference? But I know that whatever happens, I made the right call.
Internet Roundup
As you can imagine, wrapping up my final two weeks at my old job had taken up most of my time. So insteading of in-depth highlights, here’s a selection of stuff for your perusal.
🧑🌾 If you’ve ever played Stardew Valley, this is hilarious. If not, I dunno, go play it?
⚾️ I don’t know anything about sportsball but this is still funny.
🐩 This NY Mag article echoes my own experience adopting Oreo.
📊 In case you wanted to try coding but you’re much more comfortable with Microsoft Office, try this.
🦾 First the robots came for the factory workers, and I said nothing. Then they came for the basketball players.
🎳 And then they came for the bowlers.
🏯 Do I fully grok wabi-sabi? No. But I’m going to say this is it.
💻 Happy to be leaving the IT world behind. Because it’s not easy.
🦀 I don’t know what’s happening here but I’m not sure I ever want to walk on a beach again.
Obligatory Oreo
A non-zero number of IT Crowd plotlines actually happened to me. If you haven’t watched that show, go binge the whole thing now.