Goodbye VML, Hello World

A Swan Song

Five years is long enough to become someone else entirely. That's not an exaggeration, it's just what happened.

Who I was when I started

I walked in the door five years ago with far more to learn than I understood at the time, and this place did most of the teaching. I've grown here more than anywhere else in my career, not incrementally but fundamentally. The work I used to approach with quiet self doubt is now work I move through with an ease I couldn't have imagined back then, and the unfamiliar problems that once felt daunting now just feel like puzzles I know how to start solving.

The people

This is the first job I've had that I'll genuinely miss when it's gone. Not only the work, though I loved that too, but the people I did it alongside. I spent five years in close proximity to some remarkably skilled individuals, watching how they thought through problems and absorbing more than I probably realized in the moment. That kind of access is rare, and I don't take it lightly. I'm going to miss them more than a blog post can really capture.

What's next

I'd be lying if I said the developer landscape right now didn't unsettle me a little. It looks different than the one I stepped into five years ago, faster moving and less familiar in ways that are hard to ignore. But maybe that's exactly the point. Growth rarely announces itself when things feel settled. It tends to show up right when you're pushed somewhere new, whether you asked for it or not.

So this is a chapter closing with a great deal of gratitude, and a new one opening with some nerves, but also with a kind of readiness I wouldn't have had five years ago.