my general ramblings…
So, in an effort to be more “engineery” (because you have to come from the right “pipe” to be “engineery”), I’m going to up my game and speak at some conferences.
To get my feet wet, I’m going to help TA with Brian Holt at Forward 4 in February (check out my horrible picture here). We’ll be talking about React and CS fundamentals in general.
This should be lots of fun, and my first time talking in front of some a wide and broad audience. Come check us out!
Last year some time, I wrote a post about being giddily excited about working at a “dream” job in Portland.
A little over a year later, I find myself back in the Bay, back where my Silicon Valley career started. I know for some people, working at a place in different disciplines can be a rewarding experience. Finance, marketing, management, etc., probably thrive in corporate environments. But when you are a creative engineer, who wants to create impact, get things done, solve challenging problems, and dream big, an overbearing corporate bureaucracy can crush you to a pulp.
I used to always take company culture for granted until I actually experienced one phenomenally bad (for me). I have never spent so much time in meetings, had more meetings to quantify the previous meetings, spent more time wondering why JIRA tickets aren’t in the right column/state than solving issues for consumers, had code “reviews” more focused on the fact that a line is commented out instead of the performance of an algorithm or memory, getting more grief for being 10 seconds late to a standup instead of celebrating progress in the standup, being completely unaligned with product/design because “you are an engineer, not a designer”, ….
ARGH.
I must say, my manager at my previous company warned me. He was worried about me going to a place that wasn’t focused solely on engineering given my talents. I believe I owe him a bottle of wine or 4.
Needless to say, I am so happy to be back in an engineering focused environment. One where I can actually focus on creating delightful user experiences, work with stunning colleagues aligned with the same goals, and getting things done. Or as you would say, just doing it.
Well, it’s a little over the midway mark of 2014, and so much has changed in the first half of the year that it’s a complete blur.
I left my old job at Comcast for a great new role at Nike. Much more consumer focus and I’ve been overwhelmed by awesomeness since my initial “running start.”
This also means I moved out of the Valley to Portland. It’s funny, the experience and awe I’m getting in Portland is what I expected to receive in the fabled SV. However, I don’t think I fit into the meritocracy equation just yet. I’ll save that for another post when ready.
I also happen to find this area friggin gorgeous:
I’ve also become a father, which has been the absolute most awesome experience ever. I now get that whole “changed focus” thing people talk about. This little girl is what it’s all about.
Ciao for now!
I’ve always been a fan of Apple, looks like I could definitely be a “culture” fit there 🙂
I used to be a big fan of Slide Show Pro / Director for managing images on a private site (outside of using flickr or things of that nature). It seems that the developers have completely abandoned that project, especially based on the lack of communication on their forums (in other words, DO NOT BUY).
So now, I’m trying out their other project, Koken (koken.me), and it seems to be pretty cool, especially with the ease of targeting publishing directly from Lightroom. Provides all the ease of uploading, theming, responsiveness, and device support in a non Flash way (thank the heavens!).
Time to switch some of my clients over to this, and learn their theming framework. I think I’ll create a custom theme for my photos site with some Bootstrap and Angular fun, but for now just this.
I definitely feel this guy’s pain, finding good documentation on Angular is…. interesting. This is a great start at unlocking it’s mysteries in terms of directives, time to go refactor some code!
It’s been a really long time since I posted anything worthwhile, so I’ll start off again with a thought I had over the weekend:
[quote]Your career shouldn’t be defined JUST by what “sexy” marquee company you work for. It should be defined by what you DO with your intellect and aptitude when put in the right environment. Be known for your results not your badge, that badge isn’t always guaranteed to open the right doors.[/quote]
I definitely need to use this blog more, but I’ve been so busy the past few weeks I sometimes forget. I should probably use Omnifocus to create a weekly “write a blog” task to corral some of my thoughts. On any note, expect some updates:
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I think that’s it for now, hopefully I force myself to actually do it.
[UPDATE] there is a GoodReads social widget, and many other things I didn’t know it could do
Great quick and dirty “class” on using Chrome’s DevTools, which I think I may start using more than Firebug (for certain things). Check it out => Code School – Discover DevTools.