Archive for April, 2010
Wishing upon a star…
Sunday, April 4th, 2010
Of Mickey Mouse and This Man
My last day at The Walt Disney Company will be Monday, April 12, 2010. The 99 magical days will comprise the shortest period that I have ever had full time employment and the largest company that I have ever been employed by. I am excited, scared, and excited about my next career move: software engineer at Snowball Factory.
Big Details
I am moving to San Francisco the day after my last day at Disney. Arthur will be staying in Los Angeles for a few months while we find an apartment and make moving arrangements. I’ll be commuting home to LA on the weekends. Being away from Arthur will be the most difficult part of this big decision.
The Startup
Snowball Factory makes Awe.sm, a powerful social sharing analytics platform. I learned of it through Jonathan Strauss‘s presentation at BarCamp LA and immediately signed up Digital Dandelion to try it. It’s an impressive product that provides insights on how content is shared. I can’t wait to work on what’s next.
Of course, I might not have met Jonathan or learned of Awe.sm had it not been for its other cofounder, Laurie. He blogged about me in the Apple Switch commercial in 2002. We kept in touch online and finally met in real life in 2009. He’s smart, sassy, and awesome in general.
Attending Twitter’s developer conference, Chirp, will be one of my first acts of startup glory. Snowball Factory will also be throwing a Chirp preparty. Not a bad way to kick off an intense position!
(Snowball Factory is also seeking an incredible backend engineer who wants to work with emerging technologies like Hadoop, Hive, Redis, and Cassandra. More…)
Moving On Up
With this job, I will be bidding farewell to Los Angeles. I recently wrote a best friend that I always seem to discover a fondness for the place that I’m leaving as I’m leaving. This is oddly true for Los Angeles, a place that I never particularly liked and had no intention of staying in when I arrived. It grew comfortable over the last three years. Arthur and I have the most incredible condo-partment that we’d buy if we could. We have our favorite coffee shop, butcher, farmers’ market, and hikes. Most importantly, we have amazing friends in Los Angeles. I can’t put into words how I feel about leaving them. It’s too difficult.
Something about San Francisco stole both of our hearts on our first trip there. I hope that the charm we’ve felt on our last five trips there welcomes us when we become residents. Certainly, San Francisco offers the career opportunities that both of us haven’t found in Los Angeles. We’re picking the opportunity to grow over the comfortable certainty the start of the new year blessed us with. I hope it’s the right decision. I know it is. Regardless, it’s going to be an adventure.
Photo credit: San Francisco Bay Panorama by Kevin Collins CC BY 2.0
