The next chapter

About a year ago, after I left Automattic and enjoyed some time off, I started looking for the next thing to do. This was not a fun period at all. I landed some interviews with Big Tech Companies™. Still, I struggled to get through the automated coding tests because of a) being nervous as hell, b) always wanting to overdeliver, and c) not being a hardcore engineer.

I handled a lot of rejections, and they always fell into one of two categories: either me not being hardcore enough as a programmer, or me being too creative (or at least they thought I was, and that the job would be boring for me).

I’m very thankful that around the time I really started to get worried, I got a call from Dimitri of Vectrix. Vectrix is an AI startup that automates order entry for shipping companies. It was a world totally unknown to me. Behind every truck you see on the road, there’s a whole process that starts with the transportation company receiving an email to transport goods from A to B. Extracting those details from the email and entering them into the shipping system is hard and tedious work. Work that Vectrix wants to automate.

I began working at Vectrix a few days a week, helping get their frontend up and running. Over time, I took on more responsibility and led the frontend for a product redesign. Even though I enjoyed the work, I started to feel like it wasn’t quite what I wanted. There were two main reasons for that:

• First, transport logistics wasn’t really my area, and I do my best work when I’m solving problems that matter to me personally.
• Second, it became harder to balance this job with what I really wanted to do: work on side projects and smaller ideas.

The team at Vectrix understood my situation and let me reduce my hours, but I still felt torn. Juggling other projects alongside my main job was tricky.

I decided to end my work with Vectrix on good terms. Last week was my final week wit them. And now I’m looking at a blank screen with the cursor blinking.

So, what comes next?

Over the past year, I’ve launched many side projects, and they have slowly become a real source of income. I plan to continue doing that, keep coming up with stuff, scratch my own itches, throw spaghetti to the wall, and see what sticks. To put in a mission statement, I want to add value to the world by creating apps, websites, and tools that provide real solutions to real problems, problems originating from my own world, because one person has already validated those problems (me!).

This will be my main focus for the next few months.

Besides that, I want to focus on The Fun Stuff™, select projects for clients that aren’t too long, that are fun to do, with people I like working with. Think campaign websites, bots, weird AI tools, and shops (please buy a raincloud). Please reach out if you think a project would fit my boat, I'm really good at this!

These are exciting times. Let’s get started.