OpticsPlanet Done
After almost 4 years, I quit Opticsplanet (recently renamed Ecentria Labs). It was a good run – as I stated in my 2013 post, I loved the challenges but not the commute. The challenges for me mostly focused on management – I managed 2 teams and 12 direct reports at the time I left. This is the first job I was a full manager (done team lead) and I really enjoy helping/enabling people, making systems and processes more efficient, and being a force multiplier. But I also got to be scrum master and oversee the transition to agile methodologies which we started the year I joined. I am impressed by how more efficient it is for agile teams to collaborate with today’s tools when setup properly and how much easier it is for me to manage with those tools, specifically Atlassian suite (jira, confluence, bitbucket, bamboo), skype, and slack. I also enjoyed working with the people there – the most important thing for me in any job. I still needed to scratch my programming itch, and mostly got to do that enough via little projects here and there. However, my learning plateaued, the commute still sucked, I wanted to do other things.
So what next? First, I just got back from a 8-day solo vacation in the southwest. Much needed time to unwind, hike, snowboard, get some sun, and enjoy nature. I also plan to spend time to understand and help my wife’s growing letterpress business, SteelPetalPress.com, which Shayna successfully manages with very little help from me. I also want to spend some time figuring out what my next play will be – ideally I find something that inspires and motivates me because I believe in it. Yeah, I know, its kinda abstract and similar to what I did before – see Green Abort for quick summary. But with the politics these days I reminded how much I care and am influenced by things that I don’t have much control over, and want to change that. And maybe this will end as it did last time … back to a job in Tech since that is where my skills and experience are. Until then, a new chapter begins in 2017. Hooray for change.