Kyle is Available for Hire
I am looking for a positive company culture as much, if not more than the need for a challenging problem domain. I like to solve difficult and unconventional problems working along with a motivated small team.
The following is a rundown on my ideal role; if I won the job lottery. I acknowledge this is a unicorn, but this is an accurate description of the type of role I would like to be in long-term.
About Me
I find great satisfaction increasing productivity via automation, both for saving resources, and for documentation via automation. I have fallen hard for functional programming am try to apply the concepts and paradigms to everything I do.
Working with short iteration and feedback cycles is integral to my productivity. Due to my work style, I make extensive use of testing, scripting, and automation to allow me to close the feedback loop while solving problems.
Where
100% Remote. I would enjoy an occasional visit to a NYC or Philadelphia office location.
What I am Looking For
Company
The company should fall into one of the three following categories.
- A clear and obvious net good to society, simply, I should be proud to work there.
- Aligns with my personal interests
- Supporting people in outdoor recreations
- The maker movement
- Has heavy contributions to opensource
- Compensates well enough to make me care a bit less about the prior two points.
If the company is in ad-tech, defense-tech, or crypto-currency, its going to be a really hard sell, even with a stellar comp package. Not impossible, but unlikely.
Team / Peers
The team I work with is more important than the company we work for. I enjoy working with teams that have the following attributes.
- Heterogeneous — In skills, background, and experiences.
- Nimble — This typically implies a small team, but a cohesive team can move quickly too.
- Autonomy — Team has agency, and the ability to execute on it.
- Mentorship — Everyone can learn something from someone.
Day to Day
Day in and day out, this is what I want.
- Functional languages — Pure functions and compostability
- Ownership — Able to use own development environment. I live life in a terminal emulator, 80 characters wide. Plain text is my preferred interface to the outside world. I prefer CLIs, TUIs, and APIs over desktop apps and webUIs.
- Write meaningful code — more mainline code, less glue, minimal
(to|ya)ml - Agile — not Agile^(TM)
- Iteration — Not much is better than an almost instant feedback loop
Culture
I value the following in the culture where I work.
- Collaboration — People work together to solve problems. People share knowledge openly and collaborate with people from other roles (e.g. engineering, QA, design, UX, support).
- Respect — People respect the people they work with regardless of their role. Peers can be honest with each other.
Perks
- 4+ weeks of vacation. This is most important to me, everything and anything else is just icing.
Pros
The following are above and beyond and will excite me even more about your organization.
- Flexible work schedule. 4/8/32, 4/10/40, 9/8/80, etc.
- Donation Matching.
- Support for employees using company time for enrichment like professional development, open source contributions, 20% time, community outreach.
- Support for employees attending conferences.
- Support for the local tech community.
Cons
The following things will make me less excited about your organization. They’re not dealbreakers, but I will probably ask for greater compensation if some of these practices are present at your company.
- An unlimited vacation policy.
- Policies that limit what employees can do with their free time (e.g. banning employees from contributing to open source).
- An excessively corporate structure — bureaucracy for bureaucracies sake.
Dealbreaker
Having a primary role supporting either a printer, a phone, or a ‘legacy’ system. Life is too short.
Contact me
Does all of this sound interesting to you? Awesome! You should contact me if you meet the following criteria.
- You work for the organization you are contacting me about. Ideally, you are part of or work closely with the technical team.
- You read the post and think your organization would be a good fit for me and vice versa.
- Your organization is hiring now or in the near future.
Please contact me via email at kyle@ondy.org and include the following:
- The name of the organization you are contacting me about.
- Where the organization is based.
- What kind of organization it is (e.g. private/public company, non-profit, government).
- A brief description of why the organization would be a good fit for me and vice versa.
- Information about the position(s) and/or a link to relevant job postings.
- Any other information you think is useful.