why i work
Names changed to protect the innocent:
Hello, Mr./Ms. Recruiter.
So you seem like a good person, and NYC is a small market. We’re bound to run into each other again, so I’ll level with you, regarding the companies you’ve mentioned that are hiring someone with a skill-set “exactly like mine”:
Up til Friday, I was working as a “DevOps Engineer” in a renowned, 60+-person, 4 year old startup that is well on its way to being extremely successful, for a pretty nice salary of 100k+/yr, with all sorts of silly perks and work bonuses, and relatively regular work hours.
And yet, I quit, after two weeks at that company. I didn’t want to merely maintain stuff, or take advantage of a “market condition” that just happened to need people with my skillset. I want to grow.
Do I believe in DevOps? Heck yes - I don’t think I can operate in any other way, honestly. Any other sort of Systems Engineering methodology is, by all measures, inherently broken and wasteful (save the one-man shops). That’s not my problem…
With a heavy heart and a sober mind, I left that job to work as a “Jr. Developer”, working part-time on systems chores that don’t merit a full-time sysadmin. The salary is more than fair, given that I’m a complete hack in ruby, anyway. The hours are probably going to be longer and the work much harder. However, there’s opportunity for me to maintain and develop software that will scale from terribly hack-y primordial spark-up stuff into something that is worthy of multi-million dollar valuation stuff, and would truly deliver value to the end user.
Point of the matter is, I don’t care about short term salaries, titles, or comfort. I care about:
1. Learning to implement the best possible technologies and not succumbing to dogma from the house of Stallman, Knuth, Jobs, whoever (or at least, be polytheistic). The company’s culture must constantly strive to be exemplary, and not merely maintainers of mediocre solutions.
2. Gaining cross-functional exposure, partake in product development, and build things that I can really, truly care about. Constantly.
3. Having access to actually make architectural decisions and pick the best possible technologies (hence closing the loop). I need that control at this point, because I don’t want to have to blame anyone but myself, or at least, be on a team that recognizes failure and works to quickly abandon the mistake and fix it (pivot).
4. Working with people who are truly passionate about their craft and are the best in their class, who don’t need free massages, beer, or a Nerf arsenal to enable them to love their job. That stuff works for kids - I’ve kinda grown out of that childishness.
5. Truly not ever having to say sorry and doing the work early and undirected, because it’s good work, not because everyone already knows it has to be done.
Do you really want to pay a guy to play referee, or do you want to get the best goalies or strikers on your team simply already know how the game is to be played?
Anyway, keep me in your rolodex, but for now, I’m good where I am.
Cheers.
