roncli.com blog: All Good Things and Such

It's been a long time since I've written anything of substance here, so let this post serve as a catch up to what's been going on.

Since April of 2012, I have had the pleasure of working on the iOS application known as Sift. The company developing Sift is a San Francisco Bay Area startup, of which I am a founder. Needless to say, I put in many hours of work into the product.

Sift was more than a job to me. It was an opportunity to do something big, and perhaps make a profound impact in the way people shop online. It's still in its infancy, but the product that we put out there is pretty awesome.

However, I decided to step away from the company in February after three months of consideration. It was a very difficult decision for me, as I truly believed in the product and the company. I was a remote worker in a high-impact position, and I found that it wasn't easy maintaining the visibility required of such a position in a remote location while still being able to get done the stuff that needed to get done. This became especially true as the company grew, both with more internal employees and having to work with multiple contractors outside of the company (and the country), which would have me going as early as 8 am and as late as 2 am. Combine that with the demanding travel schedule - I spent only 8 of the final 18 weeks of 2013 at home - and it's not hard for most people to see how stress levels were through the roof.

Extreme stress levels aren't something I'm particularly fond of, which led to my decision to move on. I did spend a good deal of time with the company, accomplishing and learning plenty along the way. I learned much about the open source world, and found that I very much enjoyed working with Node JS. I met a lot of awesome people as well, and I can only wish for their further success as Sift continues to grow.

While leaving was certainly not a decision I came to lightly, I'm quite happy that I was able to leave my second startup on my own terms after being able to accomplish so much for them. My first startup, Trax in Space, ended in financial disaster, and I wasn't ready to step away when it all fell apart. This time, I look back fondly on the experience, knowing that I was a major contributor, and that the company is still growing upon the foundation that I helped to build.

So what's next for me? Well, back to the Monday through Friday, 8-hour a day grind, resharpening and honing my .NET skills while bringing my schedule back to a sense of normalcy that I have found was very much missed. What else?

Music. I'm slowly getting back into my music, and as always have several songs floating around. I want to get myself a new electric guitar next, as my last one bit the dust some years ago. In the meantime, I post things I'm working on to my creative blog as I work on them.

Coding. I'm in the process of upgrading all of my .NET projects to 2013, will be updating LibWowAPI, and plan on slowly transitioning my websites over to Windows Azure. I plan on learning Rendr and incorporating it into my personal website, roncli.com, as a way of learning and showing off my node.js skill. And I am wanting to figure out Xamarain so that I may be able to write mobile games.

Gaming. And of course, I spent a ton of time between jobs gaming. I'm big time into Diablo 3 these days, have gotten into streaming my gaming experiences, and am a regular host on the Six Gaming Podcast where we talk all about gaming.

Seems like I'm getting back to my roots these days. That could be a sign of some wonderful times to come.

Labels: Azure, Coding, Diablo III, Editorials, Gaming, LibWowAPI, Life, Node, Rendr, roncli.com, Sift, Six Gaming Podcast, Stress, Tumblr, Twitch, Xamarian

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