A new adventure
Since I wrote last month, I’ve been doing a lot more thinking about the future and have finally decided what’s next for me.
For the last few months, I’ve been working as a contractor at a company called Gower Street Analytics: a really interesting start up in the movie business that predicts the global cinema box office. I’ve been working remotely from home each day alongside a small team of developers, learning Clojure and ClojureScript, pairing with tmux, vim and appear.in, building tools for film analysts and planning cool new research with my co-workers.
At first it was simply a great way to get back on my feet after the Ealdorlight Kickstarter failed, but I’ve been drawn into both the data analytics work and the fantastic team that’s been assembled at the company. The people I’m working with are smart, humble and focused. Much of my coding, training and coaching has been solitary for the last four and a half years, and it’s been great programming in a team again, especially one this good.
In fact, I’ve enjoyed it so much that I’ve decided to accept the CTO position, and will be leading the technical team there full-time from the new year.
This move does change my relationship with the games industry. I’ve always been a part time indie developer, coaching and advising technical leaders to pay the bills. At one time I hoped I might rely on video games for all my income - this move represents a shift away from that goal for now. Despite this, I’ve some side projects I’d love to work on, and will continue working on Sol Trader in a hobbyist fashion. There will still be Sol Trader updates when I can manage them - I’m in the middle of preparing the latest one.
This is my first full-time role since I closed Eden seven years ago, and it’s great to be back in a leadership position in a growing company with a great team. There’s loads to do and I’m excited to begin talking more about the interesting work we’ve been doing - you’ll hear more from me in future about that.
If you’re looking for a great new permanent position in a remote team, which cares about code quality, working together well and doing things right, then get in touch.
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