I will be joining Requesty in August. My time at Decipad is coming to an end. I want to describe what I’m feeling, what I’m hoping for in the future, my apprehensions, and what I’m looking forward to.

3 Years (What I’m feeling)

Decipad has been the start of my professional career. Even though I had worked at other places before - and even founded my own company - Decipad was the first time I worked, as part of a sizable engineering team, to build a product.

I was hired by Nuno, who I regard as one of the kindest, most inspiring and decisive people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. I hope that our paths cross again, and if not I will forever regard him as a friend and role-model.

I learnt how to work as a team, I learnt how to make product decisions, I learnt how to talk to clients. I came into Decipad as a hot-shot programmer, I could crunch tickets like a machine, but could I steer a very new product the correct direction? No, I could not.

I leave Decipad feeling that I can make those decisions, I am able to steer a product the correct way. I am not just a coder, I’m a product engineer.

I met lot’s of amazing people - too many to list - and for all of them I am thankful for your kindness and patience as we went on this crazy journey together.

My Senior Arc (What I’m hoping for the future)

I am joining as the 2nd hire, a Founding Engineer. This role caries a lot of weight, I am not just an employee of the company, I will be someone who will shape the product itself. work hand-in-hand with the founders to build the best developer experience, the most reliable and performant way to interact with LLMs from your codebase.

Like always, I have a lot to learn. I am hoping to learn from Daniel, but I’m also hoping he can learn from me, and this I believe is the key difference from when I started Decipad. I am now a more complete engineer, and I am able to lead, much more than when I started at Decipad. I hope to bring my skills as an engineer and as a product person to the team.

This will likely be the hardest job I’ve ever worked. The area is hard, the space is crowded by already incredible people and products, and the hours will be long. It took me a while to decide that this is what I wanted to embark on, I deliberated over it for many days (I had other offers, that would potentially be more relaxed, Series A start-up). I want to be the person to take these opportunities and difficulties and face them head on with a smile. And do that I shall.

What I’m scared of (Apprehensions)

I feel nervous, but OK with the difficulty of the technical challenges ahead of me. I enjoy the space, I know a fair bit about it already, and I will learn more everyday. What I am not so confident in, is my physical ability to join an in-person team, with high uncertainty, and a growing customer base. These are very rational fears, and I am working on having control over them, but it will take a while. I am taking the time from now to my start date, to prepare myself for what’s about to come.

What I’m looking forward to

Honestly, Golang. I’ve used this language so many times in so many projects - and yes I know it is flawed - I still get much joy from writing it. I am also looking forward to working on a service which is mostly non-user facing. Requesty does provide a very lovely dashboard, but the people actually using our core service (The router), are people who will never see into requesty.

I am super excited to build these systems, focusing on: high availability, high scalability, and performance. I guess I’m saying I’m looking forward to being a backend engineer.

Conclusion

I’m moving jobs. I am really excited, and hyped to write code. More than I have been in a long time. I will enjoy this month before I start, and make sure that I am up to the challenge.