Ionrock Dot Org

I've accepted a position with YouGov and will have my last day at nGenera tomorrow. It has been a short run for me a BSG/nGenera, but honestly, it has really been fun. When I came to nGenera, it was after a failed startup experience (for myself at least) and a whirlwind job search in hopes of finding mortgage money. I was somewhat desperate for a position when I started looking and by the end I had a tough choice accepting competing offers. The whole experience honestly weirded me out a bit when it was all said and done.

I honestly chose BSG because of the people. They had a great team that were a ton of fun. I tacked on a longer commute and a slightly confusing business model in exchange for great friends and a fun work environment. The problem space was also very service oriented, focusing on REST, which has been something of a focus on mine for a while. I felt poised for a great experience. The one hiccup was Ruby . I had previously been getting more and more involved in the Python over the past few years and really enjoyed the language and the community. Coming to Ruby, I hoped I would find a comparable experience in terms of language features and open source community. While there were definitely strong points, I found myself frustrated with the environment. The interpreter constantly seemed flawed. I was consistently warned to avoid threads and strings. There were parts of Rails I disagreed with. Generally, Ruby, while interesting at times and much better than Java or C#, just wasn't Python. I found myself avoiding Ruby where I could in favor of Javascript. I thought to myself, if I'm going to be frustrated with Ruby, I'll give a go at becoming a Javascript expert instead.

This actually worked out rather well because no one else really wanted to work with Javascript as extensively. At the same time though, I was contacted about applying for a job at YouGov. Seeing as it was a Python shop, had a few friends of friends and had a history of challenging web scale problems , I gave it a go. It was a challenging interview process and I felt I learned a ton by simply going through it. I was made an offer and decided that it seemed like a great opportunity.

While I'm really sad to be leaving my friends on the Apps Team at nGenera, I think I've made the best decision for me professionally. When it gets down to it, my heart is in the Python community and while I have a ton of fun at the office, the majority of my time is spent in my editor. I'm going to miss the laughs and hanging out drinking beer in the office, but the Ruby I don't mind leaving behind.

This whole process (starting with my startup experience) has been really interesting for me. I'm not the kind of guy to change jobs and usually I do everything I can to stay at a job. I'm glad I took some time to experiment, but I'm definitely ready to settle down for a while. I'm also ready to get deep into Python (and PyCon ) and be a more productive part of the community.

Thanks so much to my team at nGenera for the good times and great experience. I'll see you at the bar!