Ornoth

Before I talk about my new gig, a brief word about the old one. I spent nearly three years working for a student loan marketing company called Edvisors. In 2013, a company from Las Vegas bought them out and phased out our Boston headquarters.

The title of this article is a bit of an inside joke. Edvisors had a lot of turnover, and people came to appreciate the euphemism “Transitions”, which was the usual subject line on the emails announcing another coworker’s departure.

Edvisors was pretty political and had (insert superlative adverb) outdated technology. On the other hand, I’m very proud of what my team accomplished. We built a good frontend team from scratch, set up vastly improved processes and standards, and dragged the company kicking and screaming toward 21th century technology and design practices.

Even after a six-month soft landing at Edvisors, I still took some additional time off. In the past year or two, the frontend technology field has advanced radically, most particularly in client-side Javascript frameworks like Angular and Ember. At the same time, I started hemorrhaging money thanks to repairs and medical bills from two big bike crashes, diagnosing and removing a faulty gall bladder, big vet bills after the sudden death of my pet cat, and renovations to my condo. Between rapidly changing technologies and a shrinking nest egg, it was time to get back to work in earnest.

Once I got serious about the job hunt, it took just a month. I only sent out four resumes, and got responses from three of them. I’m immensely thankful to have so many helpful local connections and a nicely loaded resume. It was also nice to get through the always-stressful tech interview; you never know what questions (or coding exercises) you’ll be asked, and despite having lots of experience, one always wonders how one’s tech chops will measure up against other candidates.

So two weeks ago I joined a company called Buildium, which was founded by a couple old coworkers from my Sapient days. Once upon a time, they bought and started renting a couple apartments, but discovered there was no good software to help them manage their properties and renters and contractors and taxes… So they built it themselves and started selling it, and they’ve built a thriving business around it.

I’m a senior member of their growing frontend team, and I’m really excited that they are transitioning to the Angular framework, which is a tremendous opportunity for me. They also have a strong UX design practice, which is a real differentiator for a small product company.

In addition to the two founders, Buildium employs four other old friends from my Sapient days: one’s still a working designer, and the others each manage Buildium’s technology, design, and product management practices. And there’s at least one more old friend starting in January.

Even though it’s been about twelve years since we worked together, I was surprised by the things my old friends remembered about me. One of them recalled that I was the kind of person who absolutely didn’t want to climb to senior/leadership positions, and another fondly remembered the “Snackland” website I built (in ASP & ADO!) to help teams vote for what snacks they wanted to spend their collective money on.

Having kept in touch with some of those guys, I recognized the company name when a developer position at Buildium appeared in my RSS feed of job listings one day. I reached out to one of those buddies, and the rest was pretty straightforward.

This constituted the unlocking of one new achievement: the first time I’ve ever received a job offer without ever meeting anyone at the company face-to-face! Most of the vetting was done by phone, with one video chat for the tech test with a developer in California. In fact, I was the one who insisted on coming in to check out the office and meet a few people before accepting their offer! Very different experience.

As a company that prioritizes employee satisfaction, the benefits are refreshingly good: completely flexible PTO, the potential to work remotely, and of course I’m pretty happy to have decent health insurance again, after footing the bills for my recent medical issues. And they have not just one, but TWO foosball tables, which means I need to work on restoring the meisterly skills I had six years ago. Initial indications are positive, but considerable practice will be required! There’s also the opportunity to rewrite FRank, the foosball league ranking site I made so long ago, perhaps adding a mobile interface and speech recognition!

They’re located at the opposite end of Downtown Crossing from where I used to work at Optaros, so I know the area pretty well, and plan to revisit Lanta, the Thai place that formerly was Rock Sugar, my go-to lunch spot.

I’ll also enjoy a reprise of the walking commute I had down the statue-lined Comm Ave mall and through the Public Gardens and Boston Common. Or ride a whopping two stops on the Green Line… Definitely beats the hell out of the 40-minute commute down to Quincy that I had last year! Although I’ll miss having that nice, long bike commute, too. It’s not worth riding one mile to Buildium; it’d be as pointless as going out for a two-block jog!

On that note, there is a Buildium Strava cycling club, and their big company outing is to ride the 175-mile Cape Cod Getaway charity ride for MS each year. It goes from Boston to Provincetown, like the Outriders ride I do each year; while the MS ride takes a leisurely two days, Outriders does a shorter 130-mile route in just one day! Amusingly, it usually takes place one week before the MS Ride.

I also garnered an enviable second new achievement: coming in to work wearing jeans on my first day! Very cool! But my first day ended with something a lot less cool: when I went home and checked my postal mail, I received a note that my gall bladder surgery was scheduled for Thursday, only two days later! So at the end of my first workday, I had to ask on short notice for two days of PTO!

After taking Thursday and Friday for the operation, I returned to start my second week of work a week ago. I set up my development environment and finished my first code fix. Then Friday was the company holiday party…

I already posted to Facebook about the awkwardness of starting a new job right before the holiday party, which is an experience I’m always desperate to avoid (as related in this anecdote from my Sapient days). Fortunately, two weeks was sufficient to break the ice with some officemates—thank goodness for the non-threatening mixer value of foosball!—and so I survived our seasonal Mandatory Fun.

My third week began with the deeply exciting experience of PAYDAY!!! I also have transitioned into a new (semi-permanent) team, so that I can cover for another frontend dev who is moving away at the end of the week. That’ll provide some immediate challenges, but it’ll also be exciting to be able to really dig into the work.

So overall the new job is Really Good.

Here’s one final observation. Having always set money aside when I was working, I’ve had the flexibility to take some time between jobs to unwind and just enjoy life before jumping back into it. But this fall I looked back at my resume and was a little surprised when I added up the numbers; since 2002, when I left Sapient, I’ve taken almost seven of the past 13 years off!

And being honest, I have to say that it was a really good thing. I’ve enjoyed entire summers kayaking or cycling, and been free to travel or devote time to my meditation practice. Given how insanely stressful and frustrating and exhausting software development can be, I think those periods of relaxation have been a real lifesaver for me. I definitely think it’s nice to pull a year or two of one’s retirement forward, so that one can enjoy time off while one’s still (comparatively) young, strong, and healthy. And the break gives one time to decompress and reconnect to one’s enthusiasm for work (and money!) before going back to the daily grind.

Now my most recent little sabbatical is over, and it’s time to dive back into the melee. But at Buildium, I’m really excited by the company, the people, and the technology, so I’m planning on enjoying it quite a bit.

What if you could go back to high school and have just one day for a do-over. One chance to go back and interact with those kids in a different way, without all the fear and risk. With more patience and a healthy sense of compassion. What would that look like?

Let me tell you about my weekend…

Friday afternoon I grabbed a rental car and drove back to Maine. I had a quick dinner with family, which was surreal enough, considering my brother and niece were visiting from British Columbia. But this post isn’t about my ambivalence regarding family…

After dinner I checked into my hotel and drove over to Margarita’s Mexican restaurant for the first of two gatherings of people from my high school class. Friday night was essentially a small pre-party before Saturday night’s main event, which would be the first reunion I’d ever attended.

After wandering around I finally recognized the organizer, Jamu (names will be altered to protect those who pretend to innocence). Thankfully, she was someone I knew, so it was nice to chat with her for a while. She also introduced me to the twenty or so people who had come, and was kind enough to hang with me while I dipped my toes in the edges of the proverbial social quagmire.

Over the next couple hours I talked a lot with Dido (a woman I’d never interacted with at school), and Debo (about yoga), and twin sisters Mave1 & Mave2. The likely highlight of the evening was a conversation with Rodi, who seemed reasonably interesting. But I got put off when I tried to talk to Kelo, the girl (woman) who used to sit behind me in homeroom.

If you’d known me in high school, you probably would have been surprised (as I was) to discover that I probably spent 80 percent of my time talking to women, rather than men. I guess I’ve gotten much more comfortable relating to women on the whole. It’s not really a huge surprise for the “me” that I am today, but it’s a pretty dramatic change from the “me” I was back then.

I did have brief conversations with a couple guys: Tola (our mothers are friends) and Deki (who has apparently become as rabid a Tolkien fan as I used to be when I was in high school).

Except for Jamu, I hadn’t known any of these folks in school, but it was nice to talk with them nonetheless. Apparently the people I remembered best weren’t showing up until Saturday’s official gathering. But it still wound up being a nice evening, and I was (surprisingly) one of the last people out the door at the end.

Two observations… Passing around the class yearbook, it became abundantly clear that all of us needed reading glasses, and none of us had brought them. And even in that small group, two of the women had recently been through cancer treatment.

That was Friday. After sleeping very poorly, on Saturday morning I got up early and headed out for a 40-mile bike ride from Augusta to Manchester, Readfield, Belgrade, and back. Since my annual charity ride is only two weeks away, I had to find some way to spend some time in the saddle.

I swung through the old family farmstead, which some time ago was bought, torn down, and replaced with a state government office building. I remembered picking wild strawberries in the fields, my first “hunting” trips in the woods out back, the old apple tree at the edge of our huge vegetable garden, the stand of pines out front, and the camp that my grandfather built. They’re all gone; the only thing that remains from my childhood (and my father’s) is a horrid-looking willow tree that everyone always hated. Figures!

The ride also included a lakeside rest stop in Belgrade, riding past the now-bare former site of Farnham’s (our favorite roadside farmstand), coming down Sand Hill at speed, and then the long and difficult workout climbing from the river’s edge up Winthrop Street to the airport. It was a nice ride, doubly so because it provided the only moments of and peace and “rest” (if you will) that I’d have all weekend!

After showering at the hotel, it was back to family-related activities, which featured sandwiches for lunch and then mini golf with mother, brother, and niece (yes, I won). I was incubating a headache, so I was grateful that my brother’s presence hadn’t drawn any additional family members. Even so, I pled fatigue and went back to the hotel for a quick nap before freshening up for the party.

Way too soon, it was time for the main event: the official high school reunion. I showed up fashionably on time, and did my best to step into socializing mode.

Again, I talked to more women than men, and there were a lot more folks that I actually remembered. The inseparable Nihe & Kamcca agreed with my observation that the inestimable Mr. Ayotte had taught us as much about life, philosophy, and wisdom as he had French.

To my chagrin Anqui and Diru (one of the few alumni in the Boston area) both firmly agreed that I was definitely not attractive in high school, but that I was cuter now. Oof!

Among the guys, I talked to Chrise and Ticho. Both of those could have been awkward conversations, but went fine, which was cool. Ticho works in Boston, and has been playing out in a band on and off over the years.

And I finally got to shake hands with Scojo, one of my earliest childhood friends, whom I rediscovered a few years ago when I learned that he too is a cyclist and serious cancer fundraiser, having survived testicular cancer himself. He’d even ridden the PMC back in 2008, but we hadn’t been able to connect. So finally seeing him was certainly one of the evening’s highlights.

Although I had hoped to, I didn’t get much chance to talk again with Rodi. And I again had difficulty cornering the elusive Kelo. Toward the end of the evening that was remedied when out of absolutely nowhere she trotted up to me and tried to pull me out onto the dance floor! I resisted, but between wanting to connect with her and hearing someone near me say, “Oh just go on up,” I acceded. I was flattered that for some reason she had called on me, and it was definitely a highlight. Even if, as I now believe, she had done it purely for someone else’s benefit.

Ironically, notable absences included all the people that I was closest to during high school: the popular Mika, Josa, Jemu, Jere, Keja, Chila, Meho, and others. That was a bit of a disappointment.

Another disappointment is that I really didn’t make use of the occasion to plug my PMC ride. I really should have been more forward about asking for donations, but it just didn’t seem to be the right thing to do.

As the night wore on, I started feeling exhausted by the effort of being social, and took more time to sit back and watch others, which was pleasant in and of itself. I hadn’t talked to all of the 120 alumni who had come, but I’d certainly done the rounds. Between the conversation noise, the increasingly loud music, and the sheer freneticism of bouncing from person to person to person for four or five hours, on top of visiting family, I was feeling pretty overstimulated, and—after two days of heavy use—my voice was as done as I was.

With so many people to talk to, conversations couldn’t get as involved as they had been in the smaller group on Friday, so in that sense I preferred the pre-party, although it would have been cool to have more of my friends in that group, rather than all strangers.

Overall, the reunion was interesting from a number of angles. Given the passage of so much time since graduation, most of the cliques that once separated people have dissolved, so it was nice to be able to relate to folks from a place free of group identities and social stigma. Only a couple people were fixated on status and career, and just one boor had a blatant goal of recruiting others to support his specious business venture.

Would I consider going to another reunion? Well, overall this one was good, but I think I’d prefer the opportunity to sit down and get to know a smaller number of select people in more detail, rather than have a hundred shallow conversations with lots of strangers. And I did renew enough connections to reach out to the people I’m most curious about.

As for future reunions: I might do another large event, but I would hope that the organizers continue to support smaller adjunct gatherings, like Friday’s pre-party. Although I did enjoy reestablishing contact with people that I haven’t seen in decades, I certainly don’t need to dive back into that big melee anytime soon!