It’s time for me to move on and I’m pretty excited. I had a wonderful 2 months of reflecting and look forward to working on my startup, being open to contracting, baking some more bread as well as switching to the Ruby on Rails tech stack, which has been on my heart for a long.
2 Months In
2 Months ago, my life changed. I was let go. It wasn’t my choice to move onto something new, but here I am. I’ve taken some time to work through the emotions and now ready to start, because I’m taking ownership of the next chapter. Thought things happen to you outside of your control, but you can always choose how to respond.
Since the shock, I think life has gotten better in almost every way. Maybe it was that way before, but I can’t help to notice it now. I feel loved and supported and that’s something you can only experience when you’re down.
I “miss” is the paycheck. I worked to support my family. That’s it. My money never went to funding my long list of wants and I’m proud of that. It’s a blessing to be able to serve and the fulfillment that I get from it is a thousand times better than getting what I want. So in that sense, I miss the idea of taking on that role. I’m not going to miss it for too long, but for now I don’t know when it will be back.
I enjoyed Automattic, my co-workers and the things we created, but ultimately, my time there was up a long time ago. However, I considered my family’s needs above my own, and so I stayed on. Even though this was not my plan, I have a deep sense of gratitude.
I finally have the opportunity to pursue something I’ve been thinking about for a long time: being an entrepreneur.
Growing pains and solving real problems
I started at WooCommerce (then WooThemes) when we were 20 people. It was small and I had a very direct line to the customers and the products that made our business sustainable. I’ve seen it grow from 20, to 50, then a massive shift when we were acquired, to 450. Over the years I’ve seen the growth pains when we went from 450 to 2000.
This all while everyone is working remotely. I think it is quite impressive and I don’t believe 2000 at the office is the same as 2000 remote. When you work at a big business, yes 2000 remote is a big business. Anything beyond a couple of 100’s of employees, there a shift that happens. It’s the nature of the situation. People need to specialize. Some need to handle the tsunami of incoming requests, others need make sure those requests are handled and so on. You just can’t have it any other way. Well maybe you can, but that requires a different way of seeing a business and comes with its own challenges.
If the business becomes big, you may find your role being further and further removed from the customers who pay you. You’re solving problems, but they get further and further abstracted away from the real value. The part you play in the business’s success also becomes smaller and smaller. In a sense, you find yourself at a place where you no longer understand the value you bring to the market place. You can see the machine is working, but you don’t understand why.
The opportunity and the moving cheese
One of the best business books I’ve read, who moved my cheese , talks about the economy from the context of 2 mice who found cheese in a maze. The one setup camp and the other kept his base but came to the cheese everyday. The second one was so used to moving towards the cheese that he immediately moved on to find other cheese when the pile was done. The one who set up camp was devastated. And that is how I feel, I set up camp.
Irrespective of the devastation, I’m seeing this as a gift, an opportunity to get back to learning about the market. What it wants, what it is willing to pay, where it lacks and how to build a muscle for really understanding where the market is moving. Which is actually the wrong way to think about it. No one really knows where it is moving. The only thing you can do is be aware and when you notice it, adapt.
The key is noticing it. It sounds easy, but there’s a reason why people get comfortable and caught of guard. It’s much harder than you think. We are creatures of comfort and that will never change. Only 13% of humans are early adopters and I’d make a big bet that also depends on the type of thing being adopted, as we’re all drawn to different things.
So the cheese is constantly moving and so I’m making a few changes myself.
This Blog
If you’ve read my posts in the past you’ll notice I’m at a new address and have put on some new clothes (It’s my best design attempt and I’m pleased.)
I’m carving out more time for writing here, especially on Friday’s. I’m hoping to move towards a weekly post. Something that I write in an hour or two and then publish, but maybe I will write more about that when I get it right. Let me wrap up today’s post (which took me about 4 hours to get to in between all the other distractions).
Up Next
I hoped to write more about my next chapter and exactly what I’ll be doing, but for that you’ll have to subscribe :). I’ll share more about the product that I’m building, the bread baking journey, how much I enjoy Ruby on Rails and more, or rather what I can get done in the time I allocate towards blogging.
Till next time!