A New Chapter

Last Friday I resigned from my position as an Android Engineer at Pinterest after 4.5 years working there. It was a wild ride and I've met a lot of amazing people who have helped shape my growth, my career, and will be lifelong friends of mine. It also made me realize that working at a big company is not for me, at least for a little while. I wanna talk about how I've been feeling, things that led me to this decision, and what my next chapter entails.

This past year was a taxing one for me career-wise. I felt like I hit a wall. I wasn't interested in the work I was doing and my motivation was at an all time low. This was the culmination of a lot of different challenges I was facing, but one of the bigger ones was that my job wasn’t as fulfilling as it once was. It also felt like my ideals and work philosophy as an engineer didn’t align with what was expected of me. I couldn’t build things the way I felt was right.

It was difficult for me to reconcile the tradeoffs made by building things quickly. Personally, I like to take my time and build something great. I enjoy thinking deeply about problems, really putting thought into a solution and making something beautiful both visually and structurally. That seemed at odds with what product engineering favored, building things fast. Sure, this was warranted at times, you build a quick version and run an experiment to validate the feature, then theoretically build it out properly when you plan on shipping it. But that last step was always just a dream, a JIRA ticket collecting dust in the backlog. Ultimately there wasn't a lot of time given for shipping beautifully crafted products, and although it's arguably the right decision it was one that made me unhappy.

When I thought about what did make me happy, my mind went to all the things I worked on outside of my day job. My side project Hydro Homie, speaking at DroidconSF and Android Worldwide, building small experiments with Compose UI. I got to pour myself into those projects, and it was fun! But there's another important aspect to it – in all of these cases I was building for me. I got to build, learn, and do the things I wanted the way I wanted to do them. The things that I built are things that I own. That feeling of ownership has been missing for a while, and I didn't realize how important it was to me. It's hard to put my heart and soul into somebody else's vision.

So it's time for a change. I'm going to build my own ideas full-time and find a way to make it work. I've put a lot of thought into it and I'm confident this is the right decision for me. As for what I'll be working on, I wanna build things for the Android community. If you know me, you know that I'm an Android developer and technologist at heart. I’ve gotten some amazing opportunities to speak at conferences and share the things I’ve learned over the years. I’m inspired by people like Josh W. Comeau, and the folks at Point-Free. These are people who master their craft, build beautiful software, and teach about their methodologies and underserved topics in their respective domains. That’s what I want. I want to master my craft, build beautiful Android experiences, and share it with you all. If you don’t wanna miss out, make sure to follow me on Youtube, Twitter, and Mastodon.

I realize I'm giving up a lot, a stable income and getting to work with some amazing people. I also realize I’m extremely privileged to even entertain this, to go without an income and try and work for myself. Long hours and hard work lie ahead, and there is a good chance it doesn't work out. But for the first time in a while I am excited to wake up and work, so I guess it's time to get to it.