The following is a post I will change and refine a lot in the coming month(s). If you are reading (you most likely aren’t), know this may be a running ramble for a while.
what have I been up to
Among the Ice Floes, William Bradford, 1890
New Work
I left my first foray into the startup world, Kiddom. While startups can be brutal and unfair to engineers, salespeople, and managers, all with little notice, they are also raw experiments where the potential to learn and drive interesting ideas is available only in small startups willing to risk it all.
While Kiddom, in the education sphere, was not as cutthroat as other, more explosive tech areas, it still gave me a place to learn untethered, something I did not experience until my first day in January 2022. I will always be grateful for that; it really allowed me to discover what I enjoy doing and to work with technology that would be too frightening in a coffee-cup-and-tie corporate environment.
Perhaps always best to reflect on what you’ve learned; there is really a single quote from a senior which has got me through many rough days: “Well, we can’t break it anymore. And we need to get it up.” I started fearful, afraid of collapsing systems and inexperience driving me to an early termination. But really it is about tenacity. If you don’t give up, something will come together. And being too scared to touch something prolongs the problem. Now, I’m not advocating against safety; rather, against decision paralysis. Any decision is almost always better than no decision.
Side Projects
I’ve been working on a lot of small side projects in my spare time. Part of my sudden urge to start building is the prevalence of AI. It really does bring a concept to a real product at an ungodly speed.
I’ll write about them soon.
So where to next? I’ll keep writing this someday and continue this tale.