When I first moved to Kansas City in 1999, I saw a billboard for a local startup. I looked them up online and found out they were syndicating comics and puzzles online and in 2006 I was hired on as a programmer, and I got to tell you, it’s been the best and coolest job I’ve ever had.
In my first three months, I built the engine which creates most of our Sudoku puzzles; the ones in USAToday? Yeah, those are mine. Later on I got to design databases, build Digital Asset Mangement Systems, create mobile websites, a gadget for iGoogle (search for comics in the gadget directory), a wordsearch generator, and so on. Most of what I work with is on the backend and the flow of content into and out of our system, but there are few areas I haven’t had to touch. But as cool as what I get to work on is, what makes my job the best is the people I work with. I have never worked in a company that had people more passionate about their work than here.
When I first started, we were primarily a perl shop. Our sites were all mod_perl and template::toolkit. The little amount of javascript that was written was straight-up javascript. After about a year and a half of my working there we began moving away from perl and toward Ruby and Ruby on Rails. It was a hard transition for me. I was pretty set in my ways, but the passion others were showing was contagious and we all eventually embraced the change. That initial change was a catalyst for us, I think, and I believe it really opened our minds to other technologies as well. That change reminded us that there needs to be more than a single tool in the programmer’s toolbox. That change reignited our passion as programmers.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t just technology change which was in the air. We’d been hit pretty hard by the downturn in the newspaper business and as a result, we lost a lot of our staff that year. Some of the people let go were a cancer to the company (that’s always the case), but most who were let go were bright and passionate people and their loss has been deeply felt. Our IT staff which once numbered around ten at its peak was now down to four; and then our sysadmin gave his two-week’s notice. Nuts. That was three weeks ago.
But I still have hope. I have hope because those who are left are passionate and are still pushing ahead in the midst of setbacks and maintenance requests. I have hope because we’re not settling for just anyone to fill our open positions. I have hope because I still see progress being made towards the rebuilding of our foundation. And I suppose, in the end, because I have made the decision to, I still have hope.
I’ve never had a better job than the one I have right now. I have days that make me want to scream and start sending my resume out to the far corners of the earth: when requests tickets are thick; when short-sighted decisions are made; when I make some boneheaded mistake. But when I look at our people and our potential, when I see what is just around the corner, I know I all is not lost. The few good jobs that are out there are worth fighting for. This is one of those jobs.
I’m writing this, not because anyone cares, but because I had to. To some extent just to get it off my chest, and to some extent to honor those who have left and those who have stayed.