A few days ago, my manager at TrackAbout asked me some questions about my career to find out why I work there, how likely I am to leave, and what I would change if I could. For managers that want to keep their employees (and keep them happy), it was a good exercise. Good employees will be getting occasional offers from recruiters and other companies to consider other jobs, so they’ll already be thinking about similar questions.
“Why do I work at TrackAbout?” “What would tempt me to leave?” “How can I easily, and quickly, tell off recruiters that obviously have no idea what’s important to me?”
This is an attempt to answer those questions for myself and for others. If you are trying to get me to leave TrackAbout, consider these thoughts a challenge: How can you beat my current deal? (I think you’ll find it hard to do so). If you are Larry, my manager, and want to keep me happy (Hi Larry!), don’t worry too much. Worrying a little is fine, though. That’s what helps us keep improving.
I work at TrackAbout because I want to work from home, I like to work at small companies, I love to tackle interesting challenges that involve both product and technical decisions, and it’s nice to be working in the world of real things.
The product itself is not something I’m so passionate about that I specifically looked for companies making it. And though I’m coming to appreciate the value it provides to our customers, I’ll never care about asset tracking at the same level as the founders. That’s fine. When it’s my turn to found a company, it will need to be in an area I’m so passionate about that I can’t stop thinking about it. Until then, I’m happy to tackle the interesting problems that TrackAbout presents.
What I did specifically look for in coming to TrackAbout was a successful company with a culture of remote work that had interesting challenges to solve. And I’ve learned over the years that there will always be interesting technical challenges to keep me engaged. Because that’s what really makes me happy - solving interesting problems, whether they are big or small. For some reason I seem to be drawn to problems with existing solutions. I’m more of a cleanup guy than a one who has solutions spring fully formed from my head. I love to make code better, and tend to be more successful when doing that than when writing new code in the first place. It’s not that I don’t write new code, it’s that I work best writing it in the service of fixing problems with existing solutions.
I’ve only been at TrackAbout for a few short months, but I’ve already found tons of ways, large and small, that I’d like to change the code or the product. Some of them I’ve tackled, like making our mobile simulator more closely match what shows up on the device, so it’s easier to test stuff. Or making it possible to debug the unit tests in our mobile solution (that was a really easy code change, the hard part was knowing why they weren’t debugable in the first place). Or moving our code from Subversion into Mercurial. Heck, if I could focus exclusively on our technical debt for the next year, I’d be in heaven.
The key is that in a product as large and as old as TrackAbout, there are enough problems and challenges to keep me happy and productive for years. Some of those come from being a product used in the real world, rather than the virtual world that information workers live in. Our code has to deal with all kinds of edge cases. In the world of asset tracking things get lost, stolen, broken, etc. Barcodes on assets get dirty and cannot be scanned, legacy systems need to be integrated, and paper is still used for too many things. Finding good ways to write modular, reusable code when it must also handle the messiness of real life is a fun challenge. And it’s one that provides real value to our customers.
Beyond finding satisfaction in the work itself, TrackAbout also has a great environment that lets me and my family find happiness outside of work as well. We now live back in the west, closer to family. We are able to get back on track with retirement savings because we’re not living on the crowded, expensive east coast. And without a commute, it’s much easier for me to find the time to exercise, to teach my kids math, and to help out at church and in Cub Scouts, while still doing more at work than I’ve been able to do in past jobs.
Yes, barring drastic changes in my life, that means it’s highly unlikely I’ll move to Silicon Valley, or Seattle, or New York, or Boston for a job. If you, friendly recruiter, want me to, you’ll have a very high bar to jump over. So if you’re willing to make that leap, or if working remotely is supported and encouraged at your company, I might be willing to talk.
If not, there are some interesting problems to solve that I need to get back to.