jessenoller.com

Ear­lier this week — I made the rather dif­fi­cult deci­sion and resigned from my cur­rent job. Yes — I have a new one in the bag.

The job I resigned from has been one of the best, most reward­ing jobs in my career. I’ve had the lux­ury of work­ing with some of the best engi­neers I have ever met, on a problem/solution that is, by far, the best in it’s class.

I’ve been work­ing with what I count as my sec­ond fam­ily for close to five years. You don’t walk away from some­thing like that lightly, or with­out good reason.

My rea­son was sim­ple: I enjoy star­tups. I love blaz­ing trails, explor­ing tech­nol­ogy. I love push­ing bound­aries and mak­ing some­thing tan­gi­ble and new where there was noth­ing before. It’s why I love software.

Some peo­ple would say that soft­ware is not a paint­ing — and to an extent, they are right. But the pride you feel when you see your soft­ware come alive, get adopted and grow day after day is much the same feel­ing of accom­plish­ment and pride you get when you do fin­ish a work of art.

Per­son­ally, I feel that star­tups engen­der the wild west — all ideas are open and ready to be explored, much of the ter­ri­tory is uncharted, and you remain (in many cases) unen­cum­bered by processes, bureau­cracy and history.

That all being said — it’s not with­out an aching heart that I say good bye to my friends, col­leagues and the prod­uct I helped usher into the world. Both the prod­uct, and the peo­ple remain best-in-class, and I wish both the com­pany, and the peo­ple the best in the future.

The great (and some­times bad) thing about star­tups though, is the fact that if you live in a place where star­tups are always com­ing and going (i.e: Boston) then sooner or later, you’re going to end up work­ing with many of the same peo­ple again. Due to this, I’m ulti­mately OK with say­ing good bye to many of the cowork­ers I have today, because I will see them again in due time.

That all being said — I have a new job (obvi­ously). Later this month I will begin work­ing for an Acton, MA startup called Black­wave. I’ve had the plea­sure of meet­ing the peo­ple there and explor­ing the tech­nol­ogy, and I have to say I got that old spark back in my head. The spark that keeps you up at night think­ing about how to solve The Prob­lem and how to test The Prob­lem. The one that makes you get up early to write notes down to your­self like “if we sim­ply change x here and here, then in the­ory we can cut our test­ing to y…” and so on. It’s the spark of inspiration.

In speak­ing with them — I wanted to solid­ify some­thing that’s been chew­ing at me for a lit­tle bit — and that’s hav­ing some amount of free­dom to con­tribute to open source — in my case, Python-Core and python-related projects. I’m happy to say, Black­wave was more than will­ing to express their sup­port and open­ness to con­tribut­ing to the com­mu­nity. I can’t go into details — but with any luck, I should be able to be a lot more open with much of my work, and also give a lot back.

Again — with that all being said — I will take this one oppor­tu­nity to say — yes, Black­wave is hir­ing. If you’re a python/java/c/c++ per­son, or you just love doing QA and test­ing and are look­ing for a small, fast mov­ing team — and live in the Boston/Metrowest area (south­ern New Hamp­shire is OK) — go ahead and drop me an email. I’m def­i­nitely putting feel­ers out for any Python­istas in the area who are look­ing around. I’m dou­bly inter­ested in Python­istas with a QA back­ground to help focus on test engineering/automation.

Send your resumes to me (jnoller at gmail dot com)!

I’m look­ing for­ward to the upcom­ing months with excitement.

Earlier this week - I made the rather difficult decision and resigned from my current job. Yes - I have a new one in the bag. The job I resigned from has been one of the best, most rewarding jobs in my career. I've had the luxury of working with some of the best engineers ...