Ownership and Intention
2021-06-18
tl;dr: I’m joining Husmus as their Director of Engineering.
I never expected to be in consulting for over a decade. When my wife and I moved to Richmond, IN in 2010, I didn’t really know what I was going to do. I got a job at a small local web shop and stumbled into a consulting career. When that job soured on me, I stumbled into being an independent consultant for about a year. Then I stumbled from there into an eight year stint at InfernoRed Technology.
I don’t regret how my career has gone, but it certainly hasn’t been intentional. Even my first job out of college was predicated highly on getting something as close to my now wife as possible. We were still two and a half hours apart, but that was way better than the distance we dealt with through college.
So, when I decided to start job hunting in April, this was really the first time in my career that I was searching for a new job with intention. I was still working, so I wasn’t under financial pressure to find something immediately. I was pretty burned out on consulting. I had spent a decade jumping from client to client, never feeling like I had any real long-term stake in the product or codebase. I knew that I wanted that to change, but wasn’t exactly sure what form that would take.
I ended up applying to twenty-one different companies. Initially, I was applying directly with most of them, but that shifted more towards recruiters over time, either in-house or external. There was definitely a tendency to focus on smaller product companies to try and get that sense of ownership I wanted. I also really wanted to get into Elixir more if possible, but that part didn’t end up working out.
Of those twenty-one, I had interviews with thirteen. In an approximately one and a half month window, I had thirty calls, both introductory calls with recruiters and more formal interviews. It was draining. Being able to work full-time while job hunting was definitely a privilege, but spending a couple of hours most nights reading job postings, writing cover letters, filling out applications, prepping for interviews, and completing take home exercises was a lot. I’m not going to miss any of that. Neither will my family. I greatly appreciate my wife’s patience over the past two months as she barely saw me in the evenings.
That’s a whole lot of background to get to announcing that I am joining Husmus as their first employee and Director of Engineering. Working for a very early stage startup was something on my radar when I started my search, but I didn’t actually expect it to pan out the way it did. I’m looking forward to having both literal ownership in the company and emotional ownership in what I’m building.
I greatly enjoyed my time at InfernoRed Technology and want to thank everybody there. I got to work with so many amazing people over the years. I knew that no matter the client, I could trust that everybody I worked with at IRT was going to get the job done. Not being able to sit down at my desk every morning and talk to them on Slack is something I’ll definitely miss.
And a huge thanks to the founders of IRT, Josh, Scott, and Art. Throughout my entire interview process they were open and supportive. It’s a sign of great leadership when they continue to support you and ask how they can help even as you’re trying to leave.
I’m looking forward to the next chapter of my career and making it the first one I’ve authored with intention.
