Starting just about anything new can bring stress and anxiety into one’s life.  It doesn’t matter what it might be, new city, new job, new school, new apartment, new diet. All of these things can cause a certain amount of stress and anxiety in one’s life when the change happens.  It also will likely cause a certain amount of liberation from the previous circumstances, which are usually what leads to the change to begin with.  

I try to challenge myself often, to see how I’ll react and to realize the unforeseen benefits of change.  No matter how much I analyze some choices in life (thorough analysis is helpful), there are always positives that I never even considered. That’s why it’s so important to always be open to new things and new opportunities when they arise. This is why I’m trying to look at change as a good thing. If I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing, then usually change will push me in the right direction.

Why I gave job security a back seat

In October 2010, I had been working at Large University as a senior software developer for about two and a half years and I probably could have stayed my entire career there.  The thing I realized once I’d been working at an .edu institution of that size, is how little risk there is in that business model.  High school students will graduate and go to a local in-state university every year, the state will threaten to pull their appropriations but in the end they won’t.  In short Higher-ed is recession proof.  And as such, it’s a really secure place to work.  It also has major, major benefits if you’re in a position to capitalize: over 40, minimal debt, college age children, working on a masters degree, etc.

Here’s a little outline of the extra benefits the University factors into your compensation.

Given what I’ve explained about University budgets, you might think they would have the resources to keep the employees, who were doing the heavy lifting, happy.  Obviously, the benefits are an important part of this equation, but if you’re a young person, who has no children, some student loans and no aspirations of additional degrees, it falls short.  Not everyone fits into one box and different compensation packages for different situations might make more sense in the long run.

I’m proud of the work I was_able_to accomplish there, we did some pretty big projects that made a real difference, and it was good.  I met many excellent people who taught me a lot and we had some great times, for that I’m thankful.  Special shout thanks to Heidi, Ray, Mark, Charley, Leo, Rosalind, and many others actually, it’s a long list...

Strength in networking

Through monthly PHP, Drupal, PLUG and Cocoa meetups I’ve met a bunch people who are doing inventive work in a variety of areas I’m interested in.  While this was happening, I started to feel like maybe I needed a change to grow in the areas that I wanted needed to. I would recommend to anyone looking to make a move professionally, to first start going to meetups.  Most new hires are recommended by someone already inside the company.  My move was no exception.  A friend of mine who I had been made acquaintance with via the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia Mountain Biking Association; recently made a move to a sCRM startup called Visibiz, Inc. in August.  He was jazzed on the atmosphere and the tools that they were using.  When it was made known that they were going to be making another new hire, I was ready with my CV.  My position never hit the open market, they interviewed a few candidates from “the network,” mine included and I was selected.  

What I like so far

Besides the daily foosball games.  At Visibiz, I have total confidence in everyone.  We’re a very young, small company, with a ton of potential.   Everyone brings something distinctly awesome to the table, and it’s comforting to know everyone is making lengthy daily strides in their area.  The velocity we’re reaching now is exciting.  I’m seeing feature tickets come and go daily.  The Visibiz CRM looks more professional every week.  

My primary role is very multifaceted. My title is Advanced Software Engineer, but I am carrying the torch of Devops right now.  I’m responsible for all of our infrastructure, developing our corporate website(s), and also coding on the CRM (I haven't’ done any yet, but it’s coming).  The role really suits me, and I think it’s a successful match as I’ve always been a generalist developer.  I’m trying to fill as many “buckets of knowledge” as I can.  I’ve been known to code javascript/css one minute and adjust a vhost the next.  I’ve always been interested in the big picture (probably why I got a BS in Economics).

There are always new things to learn and teach.  That’s a big thing.  We have the opportunity to create a company from the ground up, throw away all the relics of a darker time in IT where things were done procedurally and arduously.  As Scrooge McDuck once said: “work smarter not harder”, and that’s what we’re doing.  We’re using best in breed technologies in everything from our EC2 VPS, to our REST centric software architecture.  We’re using document based storage with MongoDB.  A cutting edge software and testing stack: Groovy, Grails, Cobertura, jUnit, Hudson, CoffeeScript, Puppet, and many, many other cutting edge tools that help us do more, better, faster.

We work for ourselves, essentially

This is my foray into the startup world, and it’s both high-paced-exciting, and very technically challenging.  Owning company stock is great as a motivating factor.  And in a lot of ways we all work for ourselves, because we want to see whatever piece we have be worth as much as possible.  To do that you have to put pride into your work and do things the best that you possibly can, learn from every experience, and do it better next time.  

I’m going to check in more often with updates on how things are going at Visibiz, and my experience working at a startup in general.

Hunter

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