About a month and a half ago, I left my position at Forum One to start work on a project with Amazee Labs. Yes, a month and a half is an eternity in Internet-Time, but better to blog about it late than not at all!
I loved my position at Forum One. I got to work with worthwhile clients like Oxfam and United Way, I got to solve interesting and tricky Drupal problems, and I got to work with some truly brilliant colleagues. I strongly recommend it as a great place to work. But it was always a challenge dealing with my visa situation (contrary to popular belief, I am Canadian - NOT American!), and despite heroic efforts we just couldn’t find a way to make a permanent relationship work.
Drupal is an interesting field in which to work, and there’s a lot of momentum for good developers. I chose to work with Amazee Labs because they are some of the best at what we do. I’ve always been a fan of their work on a technical level, and now, getting to be a part of the team is very exciting.
My project with Amazee is packed with smart people and exciting technologies. I’m working with brilliant Drupalists Sebastian Siemssen and Moshe Weitzman, which is a thrill on its own. We’re mixing Drupal 8 with a custom data storage backend, serving data to a thousand separate ReactJS sites via GraphQL. The whole thing is developed, tested, and run in production on Docker. Perhaps the best part is that this team is so dedicated to Doing it Right. I’ve worked with plenty of great development shops; none of them do Agile Right; Amazee does. I’ve never seen anyone process-obsessed enough to reap the rewards of things like continuous integration or even thorough sprint reviews, but Amazee is managing it. All told, it’s very exciting to work with such smart people, in such an effective environment, on such cutting edge technology. I’ve gotten to flex muscles I didn’t know I had, which is a great feeling. I will definitely be posting more about the technical issues I encounter along the way.
Of course, one of the most appealing parts of this job is the flexibility to continue pursuing my other passion in music. The Cast is getting bigger and bigger, with 30-40 shows this year. I’m really working hard to balance these two parts of my life, and the trajectory of The Cast ensures that this balance will be a big focus for me in the next several years. I don’t want to leave open source tech entirely; but I may scale back my conference visibility, and focus my contributions more. We’ll see what happens. No matter what, I’m happy to be working with a fantastic team and supportive company. On to amazeeing things together!