I've Joined Forem as a Principal SRE

A couple of months ago, Molly reached out to let me know that an SRE role had opened up at Forem and asked if it was something I was interested in. At the time, I was a technical lead at Snapdocs, focusing on performance and stability of their service-oriented architecture. I was very much not ready to leave yet because there was still so much more work to do on that platform and so many things were really moving in a lot of the right directions. Why would I want to leave?

Well, I'd been keeping my eye on DEV as a company for the past couple of years now. My first interactions with folks on the team really showed their commitment to building a welcoming community, especially for folks who were new to software development. I mean, how awesome would it be to work with a team that was putting so much effort into building a tech-focused community that wants to build people up and actively works against people that would tear others down?

Jamie Gaskins, your pickle friend

@jamie_gaskins

Between @CodeNewbies and @ThePracticalDev, I'm convinced that there is more community and positive reinforcement in software development than there has ever been. ❤️

03:29 AM - 14 Feb 2019

And then DEV went open-source, the company rebranded into Forem, and grew from running a single website for a specific community into a platform to foster many communities. I really wanted to be a part of this. And since I've done a lot of open source for free and always wanted to work on open source for a living, the idea was that much more enticing.

With all that in mind, I didn't want to pass on an opportunity like this without at least exploring the idea, so I agreed to chat with Molly about it. I asked her approximately 16 million questions and she had great answers for all of them[1]. This made it a really difficult decision (I had two choices, and they were both great for various reasons), but I decided to take the plunge and come work on the Forem platform.

I'm really excited to see what I'll be able to accomplish here. The community is fantastic, my colleagues are fantastic (they're way cooler than I am, though, so I've gotta step up my game a bit), and there are a lot of fantastic problems to solve.

[1] One of my favorite responses from her was actually "we're still figuring that out if you'd like to help guide that process". If you're a hiring manager, that's a great response to a candidate's more difficult questions! It shows a culture of collaboration and selects for people who really enjoy the thing that that unfinished process involves.