Sword Machine

Taking a job with Blue State Digital means leaving thoughtbot, and that made my decision quite difficult. To say I like thoughtbot would be an understatement. I consider thoughtbot the best company I’ve ever seen, much less worked at. There were no problems that led to my departure, and I recommend it to friends at every opportunity. I guess it’s a cliche, but I don’t really care: thoughtbot is like a family.

In my time there, thoughtbot has come a long way. When I first interviewed, it was 2 or so years old, and from everything I’d been told, those beginning years had been unfocused and extremely taxing. By appearances, their finances had only recently become stable, if they were at all; I was advised by several people against taking the position. They had, however, just made the bold choice (for early 2006) of becoming a Ruby on Rails shop, at that time the only one in Boston. As I had made the equally bold choice of becoming a Ruby on Rails developer, I found thoughtbot and I to be on the same page. Apparently they thought so too, so putting my reservations aside, I left Tenebril to be thoughtbot’s second fulltime developer.

It didn’t take long for these choices to bear fruit. We continued hiring through the fall and winter, the team got to know each other, and by the time 2007 began, thoughtbot was one tight team. Not only was I growing professionally at a rapid pace, and helping my teammates do the same, I was having a blast. I enjoyed hanging out with my coworkers as much as with any of my ImprovBoston friends; and found them equally as funny. I started getting involved with the local Ruby community, presenting the things I cared about to a receptive audience, and thoughtbot started a weekly poker game (rotating through our personal apartments) that quickly established itself as venerable tradition. I count the spring of 2007 as the only time, since before I started my senior year of college, that I have been truly relaxed, and been able to put aside the constant background panic about my future.

But things change – Floyd moved to Chicago to attend DePaul, Chad moved to Philadelphia, and Jared moved to San Francisco. When I decided to move to New York City, thoughtbot was not just accepting – they could not have been more encouraging. As one of our managers was in NYC already, we decided to up and start a whole new branch. Apartment hunting in New York City, especially when you don’t live there, is agony enough, and possibly the most stressful experience I’ve ever had; job hunting on top would have been impossible. Even after moving, when a blossoming romantic relationship led me to travel frequently, thoughtbot was flexible and supportive.

Working for thoughtbot in NYC has been different, and less exciting. Despite living with MaryBeth, this last year has been lonelier for me, with a more isolated office environment, and a smaller social sphere. Mostly though, I’ve just been getting restless. For the same reasons I didn’t want to just up and do improv all the time like I did in Boston, it was hard on me to be working on the same sorts of things, for new but similar clients, for another year. That’s the nature of the business; thoughtbot is a consultancy, and a damned good one, but it means doing other people’s work. And since it’s a Ruby consultancy, its projects are mostly inside the Web 2.0 sphere, a place as often intriguing as hollow.

All in all, I look back with extreme fondness at my time at thoughtbot. I was so lucky to be a part of the team, and to experience the feeling of waking up looking forward to going to work. I might never feel that again. A culture of quality, a commitment to 40-hour work weeks, a diversity of thought, and common sense intelligence, that are all so rare in the business world, are found at thoughtbot in combination with fantastic people. Because of that, I can say that you’d do very well for yourself to work with them, or among them—and should consider the latter an honor.