#work
Interview cycle
I'm interviewing for other jobs. It's a very strange process that sometimes feels like having a professional affair. You arrange off-the-calendar meetings with some exciting new thing, because the old one has turned sour. I'll stop myself before I go to deep on the "jobs are like relationships" simile, which I don't really believe in. What I want to say is it's a tiring situation to both have a job and be applying for jobs. The interview process for tech jobs is particularly time consuming, although not as time consuming as other fields, I'm sure. Also, I have to remind...
New job, new season
I left BuzzFeed two weeks ago and started at Kaluza the following Monday. The full implications of that are yet to be seen but for now they include: exciting new problems, lots of new people, nice new office, new cycle to the office through lots of parks, being a bit tired. I’m a really simple creature. When people at the office asked me on Friday how my first week went I kept just talking about how nice the bike ride through Regents Park and Hyde Park was and how I was looking forward to spring. I think that’s partly because...
The layoff business
London, United Kingdom
When I was growing up I sometimes thought I wanted to be a writer, but I quickly realised that doing it for a job wasn’t going to be fun or rewarding. My position is that I took the coward’s way out in choosing to go into software engineering, for a more financially stable existence, but I went into the world with a respect for the writing staff and a general dread at their constant mistreatment. At least in the time since I’ve entered the profession, software engineering has been a “seller’s market”. The pay is good, there are lots of...
A year in ads
When, from the outside, a collection of people or an institution is doing things I strongly disagree with, it often turns out that from the inside I can see all the mechanisms and incentives that make perfectly normal people works towards bad outcomes. Take online advertising. In my last year at BuzzFeed I finally bit the bullet and started working in the part of the team that makes the money: the ad tech team. Proposition: online publishing is generally supported by some combination of a paywall, donations, a benefactor, affiliate commerce, or ads. Financial Times is entirely behind a paywall....
They give it away
I think the time I spent on the Community team was interesting. Firstly it was the closest knit team I’ve ever been on, socially speaking. Partly there was a good social chemistry between team members and a sense that we had a fun part of the product to work on and we knew about it more than anybody else in the organisation. The pandemic baked in those personal relationships strongly, to the point that we became a sort of insufferable clique. The product problem was interesting because it was one of the few places working at a publisher where you...
Green chain walk
In this second lockdown it's all suddenly become about long walks and big cooks. Emma's been walking for a dozen miles at a time through a river of wild spaces in South London called the Green Chain Walk. I've been churning through the cookbooks that I've been picking at until now, mostly neglecting. Successes lately have been gyoza, massaman curry, drunken noodles, Tuscan bean soup with homebaked bread. Fridays are for film night. We take turns and choose a film that is non-negotiable, which helps us to avoid commitment problems and the Mexican stand-off of choosing what we are Both...
Accessible Buzzfeed
This article was originally published on the BuzzFeed Tech Blog Last month, external accessibility experts certified buzzfeed.com as compliant with the best accessibility practices for the web. That simple statement, ripped straight from the headlines of a boilerplate internal email, does not do justice to the two-year process that brought us to that point. Nor does it embody what the achievement means to our team, especially myself, on a personal level. In 2004, I watched my grandad build a remote control plane from scratch in his garage. I sat cross-legged at his feet on the grubby floor, ten years old....
Back to office
I might be getting back to work in the office soon. I always used to value the physical and mental separation of work and life. I think I still do and I’m looking forward to having it back for two days a week, which is the plan at first. A lot has changed since I left the office, though. I am much more invested in my home. For one, it’s gotten much bigger and can therefore accommodate work mode more easily. I also have gotten to like sitting in my own garden as I break for lunch and the flexibility...
What If Working From Home Goes on forever?
— What If Working From Home Goes on forever?, Clive Thompson in The New York Times
