2026-05-07                             dispatches from helix
   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

   I'm switching jobs. I have a lot of emotions about it.

   If I could have cooler blood, I could have liked Slice.

   I liked my team, who are all nice people. Liked my manager.
   Enjoyed my trips to the Belfast office, even if I did spend
   half of them sleep deprived. The pay was fine. The work was
   interesting if not terribly difficult.

   In the end, the amount of small frustrations overwhelmed me.
   I don't particularly want to share them here, but I don't
   think the job was going to turn into the thing that I wanted
   it to be.

   I will genuinely miss working there and be sad that I
   couldn't have been happier. I hope they do really well.

   And there's the thing that's making me a little sad: if I
   could just not care about those things, I could have been
   happy staying there and making nice money and tending to the
   databases and being a good team player.

   ---

   Ironically, I think the last time that I let myself feel
   okay like that was in England. I'd spent a lot of my 11
   years at iWeb champing at the bit: I was sure there was
   something bigger and better I wanted to do with my life and
   my career.

   Around 2015, I decided to just chill the fuck out. We were
   out of debt, I was earning okay money, the company was okay
   (many downsides, but okay) and I decided to accept that this
   was my life and I could be happy with it.

   Then in 2016 it started to look like Brexit might actually
   happen. I started looking. I got the job in Canada. Brexit
   _did_ happen. I had a taste of a few years of glory: riches,
   whip-smart colleagues, tough problems, respect of my peers.

   This appears to have burned away my ability to settle, and I
   will probably always be some level of sad in my job, chasing
   the good years of Shopify. My wife is already bored hearing
   about this, and I don't blame her.

   (I can't go back, of course: I left voluntarily because the
   company that I left in 2023 was not at all like the one that
   I joined in 2016. Going back to the thing that _I_ miss
   would require a time machine).

   ---

   IA was also full of nice people, although it was more
   immediately a bad fit for me. A classic "American" attitude
   to vacation and people leading computer programmers who
   didn't care about (or really understand) computing.

   This was the same pattern as Slice but speeded up: I liked
   my team, I didn't like the organization that I was part of,
   I lacked confidence in the people steering the ship. I left.

   ---

   Now I am going to a very small company with some of that VC
   money behind them.

   I tell myself that I want to experience the real "start-up"
   thing while I still can. I'm in my 40's and regardless of
   what's going on with AI and everything else, I am not sure
   how many more jobs in Tech that I want to have.

   It's tempting to have "one last one" -- although I said that
   about Slice -- not because I thought Slice would be a
   jackpot, but because I thought I could settle there for
   years. Maybe a little bit of me is banking on the new place
   being a jackpot, idk. Maybe I already have enough and I want
   to cosplay the SF grind culture. Maybe I will learn
   something new about what I like and I don't like.

   I was at a ~20 person company before and it was decent.
   There's not a lot of layers between you and getting things
   done. Everyone does everything. I've been in 100/1000/10000
   person organizations for so long that I think I've forgotten
   that.

   The people I interviewed with were very smart. I am looking
   forward to not being the most experienced or senior person.
   And I am not afraid of work.

   But I still can't help feeling sad about not being able to
   roll with things and live my green and pleasant life at
   Slice.