Greetings.
This will be a short update but I have some news to share with everyone -- and myself.
Today was my last day at Aptible.
I've been working at Aptible for 6+ years. It's a small company, about 25
people, but we were very profitable. I'd argue it is one of the most successful
PaaS that you never heard about. As a result of the company size, I had to
wear a lot of hats: I had to be a product/project manager, team lead, IC, SWE,
platform engineer, security engineer, and more. I had to keep a pulse on the
grand vision for the company as well as be productive working in a 10+ year old
legacy codebase. I had to work with very few business requirements, sometimes
only a single sentence, and then figure the rest out. I had to work in a tech
stack and container orchestration system I've never used before. I had to be
aware of all the security considerations when working within a system that deals
with PHI. I learned a lot, grew a lot, and eventually outgrew the company and my
desire to work there.
Ultimately the reason why I quit is because the work I was being asked to do
wasn't fulfilling or engaging. As a result I received multiple performance
reviews where I wasn't "meeting expectations" and I could feel the end in sight.
Almost all the work I was doing in the last year+ was platform engineering. I
was writing very little code, on a per-week basis it was the least amount of
code I have ever written at a company as an SWE. I spent almost all of my time
writing docs and QAing tiny contributions. The amount of manual QA and the way
we had to do it was exhausting; easily the worst part about working on a PaaS.
I love building apps, writing code and when I don't get to do them, I lose
interest quickly.
However, I say all this with a bitter taste in my mouth. I love the people that work there, love the quality-of-life and stability it provided, and could tell the leadership really cared about its staff. They got me through covid, parental leave for two kids, and they were extremely considerate when I had to take time off for life and family events. I'm eternally grateful for that.
On the sweeter side of things, I'm excited to join SmarterDX as an SWE. It's a
relatively new company that is helping optimize billing -- among other things --
for healthcare in this country. I start Monday.
In retrospect, I kind of wish I had taken some time off in between jobs, but ultimately I'm too anxious to quit a position before having another job lined up. I also didn't feel comfortable making my start date multiple months from now.
c'est la vie.
I'm hoping SmarterDX can properly utilize my knowledge and expertise in FE and
full stack development. I'm excited to work on a SaaS again.
au revoir.