New job!

— August 4, 2006 at 13:06 PDT


I'm really excited to announce that I just joined Powerset, a brand new startup company here in San Francisco. Powerset is using AI technology to transform internet searching, and that's all I can say for now. We're semi-stealth for now, so there isn't even a website to link to.

I signed my offer letter yesterday and start work on Monday. I'll be doing Rails development, initially building internal tools for researchers, and later on doing some customer-facing stuff. I expect as the company grows I'll take on managing developers, but that won't be for a little while at least.

It's a great relief to have landed somewhere this great, and I couldn't imagine a job that is more ideal for me. The company is still pretty small (I'm employee 15) and probably won't get too large for comfort for quite a while, but the founders are thinking big and I fully expect us to be a big deal at some point. I know when I left EarthLink I had an idea to start my own business, but I realized it took more resources than I had to make it work. But fundamentally that was all about having a job that I loved and a work environment where I fit in. I'm not at all disappointed to be joining a company where someone else has already done the work to create that for me.

By the way, I did end up doing a couple short-term contracts while doing the consulting thing. It wasn't bad, but I think I can safely say that I like stability more than independence. All you people who do consulting for a living, I don't know how you manage it, but you have my respect for being able to make a go of it.

I've been part of a startup before. I was employee 13 at a startup 10 years ago, so I know how much of a commitment this is and how much passion and dedication it takes to have it be worth doing. I'm not going to disappear from blogging or from the Ruby and Rails communities, but now that I've got a full-time job (and then some) again, the pace of my writing may slow down. On the other hand, I'll be working with Ruby and Rails every day and I may be discovering things worth blogging about at a faster rate, so things may actually pick up. I guess we'll have to wait and see how that works out. And I'll definitely still be speaking at the sold-out-in-under-five-hours RubyConf 2006.

7 commentsbiz

Comments
  1. Winsmith2006-08-04 13:49:12

    Well. congrats! I hope the startup'll kick off really well!

  2. Chris2006-08-04 14:50:25

    Josh Susser + AI = World Domination

  3. bryanl2006-08-04 15:23:11

    congratulations, hopefully this job won't take too much time away from this insightful blog.

  4. john2006-08-04 16:24:37

    Well that's fantastic, Josh. I sure hope your blog continues to rock the world though.

    Your a great guy and a wonderful example. May all good things fall into your kitchen sink.

  5. Pat2006-08-04 16:44:47

    That's great to hear. Congrats :)

  6. Ted2006-08-04 18:36:19

    "I think I can safely say that I like stability more than independence"

    Amen! :-) Congratz and I hope it pans out well for ya.

  7. Pradeep2006-08-05 13:51:46

    Congratulations Josh. I hope you still get time once in a while to blog out cool stuff about Rails.

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