As of November 2019, I’m now the Content Strategy Lead at balena, an awesome IoT platform that specializes in helping developers deploy, manage, and scale their edge projects. I help their teams plan, create, and manage web content.

This is a bit of a late post, but I wanted to give an update about what I’ve been up to as of late.

Why I left my other gig

I’m very thankful for all the time at Puppet. I’m also grateful to have met and worked with my team. But to be quite honest, as time went on, the place just broke my heart.

On my first day nearly two years ago, I was astounded when my orientation also included some serious policies about diversity, equity, and inclusion. I would, over time, feel embarassed and fooled because it was all a ruse.

While my team and I got along and worked very well together, we were unfortunately in a machine fueled by cronyism, favoritism, high school-esque drama, and a severe lack of leadership. I was thrown under the bus by fellow people of color, led on with fake career growth projects, and worst of all, betrayed during moments where we should be fighting to make Portland tech more diverse.

There were great leaders and coworkers here and there, don’t get me wrong. But slowly those people departed and those who were left seemed, well, lost.

It wasn’t a place to grow, so you know my policy– always be shippin’, always be growing– it was time to move on. If you have questions or want more details, hit me up privately sometime.

balena, Barcelona, and beginning anew

After a few weeks of interviewing and meeting the balena team virtually, I got to know them in-person during their annual summit in Barcelona, Spain. It was a week of being a tourist, hacking on projects, and meeting a great international group of folks.

I’ll have to do a separate Barcelona post for sure.

Weeks have gone by and I’m enjoying the fully-remote life. I spend much more focused time on my work, time with my family, and feel much more rejuvenated.

My new colleagues respect one another greatly, make time for deep thinking, and ensure we all commit to great work and representing ourselves well.

I’m actually working on real structured content projects, building content for our projects, and working on system-level change for the company. I’m not in management anymore, but perhaps it’s time for a bit of a break there.

I feel like I’m in great company. We have a lot of fun stuff coming up soon, so I’ll definitely throw in a few project updates here and there.

Until next time.