My Job

I've been working as a frontend build engineer for an open-source company one year now. I came in with only a summer internship's worth of Javascript experience. I had little Github workflow experience, but I've taken time to git good. I support developer workflows and environments, publish our packages to NPM, publish our documentation, and swoop in to help devs when they come across problems they can't solve.

I've filled holes on our team for the entire past year. Infrastucture and architecting is the hole I'm usually filling since we're experiencing growth pangs beyond what our initial architecture can support. My job is akin to construction, I have to support a sinking foundation as developers keep adding features and fixing things around the house.

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People

I love the people and my team is great. Every change developers make that I have to support is for good reason. My boss lets me build my own adventure by trusting me to prioritize my own work and allowing me to make influential decisions across our projects.

Culture

We have flexible hours, not too many meetings (unless you're a manager), and we allow working from home or remote. No one minds socializing as long as you get work done. People are friendly and not on their phones, which means they are engaged in their work. Many people have similar hobbies to me, and most everyone is approachable. ~80% of people take a lunch hour to workout and/or eat. Our 5-day work weeks are usually closer to 4 on average for most people. I'd call it a healthy workplace.

Personal Growth

In the past year, I've emerged as someone who intimately knows both the server-side and browser-side Javascript ecosystem, especially regarding build processes. I used to not understand Webpack, Babel, React, Gatsby, Typescript, and Redux, but now I feel very comfortable using all these tools. I can write and maintain HTML/JS comfortably, and I can stumble my way around writing CSS if needed. As a bonus, I've also been able to learn Web components, which I believe will become the de-facto standard for component libraries within the next year.

Work Sucks

While work is substantially better than my American high school or college, the truth is work sucks just like school. Even if I was being used to my maximum potential on projects that interest me and even if I was paid handsomely, I, like most Americans, would still be an indentured servant. And that sucks because it means you trade your highest quality time for money. No doubt it's better than trading your lowest quality time for a degree like in school, but it's far from ideal. I want to trade my highest quality time to benefit humanity, which is why I plan to retire early.

Passions Ignite

I think as a country America worships work too much. When we meet an adult, we always ask them where they work. Much more interesting are their passions, beliefs, and family. Yet we seem all to often to forfeit those for work by working late hours, folding to company culture and deadlines, and putting kids in daycare. When someone is passionate about what they believe in and devotes time to it, I think they live a life with more fire and purpose that spreads. That's what work is supposed to be like.