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Goodbye Oxyor, Hello Ripe

June 17, 2012 11:02 +0000  |  Oxyor/Marketsims Ripe NCC 2

So some of you have already picked up through my various social networking feeds, but for those of you who haven't, I thought I'd say something here and offer a little more detail for the curious.

For the past few months I've been looking for a new job. Not that working at Oxyor was terrible or anything, far from it. The people I work with are friendly and good at their jobs and I feel respected most days. No, the big problem for me was the size of the development team. Most days, it was just me, with the occasional input from our designer, and for someone like me, who learns from working with others, this hasn't done much for my skillset, and by extension, my career.

And so, I started looking, taking the opportunity to be picky and find a company that suits my skills and interests and can offer me the kinds of opportunities I want for my career. After months of searching and interviewing with some really great companies (and some grossly unprofessional ones), I found Ripe NCC.

Ripe is a non-profit corporation that, for lack of a more technical term, handles the nuts and bolts of the internet. They handle IP registration (organising who is and isn't allowed to use what address online) and they develop tools for their clients to aid in network diagnostics around the globe. I'll be working on a project they call RipeAtlas, which uses many of the technologies I've been tinkering with in my free time, like GeoDjango and Embedded Linux. I'll also be working with RipeStat, a high-traffic statatistics capturing and rendering system. It may not sound very interesting to most people, but believe me when I tell you that it's pretty damn cool for me.

Ripe is a much larger company, with a good sized team of developers for both projects. There's lots of stuff for me to learn there, so I'm pretty stoked to get started. My first day is August 1st.

Until then, I'll be helping to shore up my work at Oxyor and stabilise the project to a place where I can confidently walk away and know there won't be too much trouble for their end. I'll probably be doing occasional contract work with them for a few months to assist in the transition, and I'm told that they're already looking into finding a replacement. There's also going to be a lot of fun documentation to write, and probably lots of repeat explanations of how things work. They'll be fine though, I'm not worried.

So that's it. Yay for new job!

An Update for the Non-Twitter Folk

April 07, 2011 20:01 +0000  |  Amsterdam Food Oxyor/Marketsims 1

I'm seriously considering stealing the CSS from a nice-looking WordPress theme and crowbarring it into this site. I just hate how unreadable it is.

So here's an update for those if you not following my Twitter feed:

I've found an apartment

It's in Bussum, the tiny town that plays host to my job. The people there are definitely more reserved than Amsterdamers, but they're still friendly, even when they think I'm American. The primary reasons for my selecting this location include the 10minute walk to work and the €800/mo price tag, which is incredibly low for the size and quality of place.

I'm making friends

I've managed to meet a few friendly people at some meetups around town, either through CouchSurfing or via an event on Meetup.com. One of the people I met accompanied me to Zandfoort, a beach town on the edge of the North Sea, and then brought me to a party where I had the opportunity to meet a number of really cool people including some Romanian Expats who were impressed by my (very limited) knowledge of their language.

The job is Big

It's funny, during the interview, I really wasn't sure why they were hiring a full-time guy for something that really felt like a contract gig. As far as I knew, they just wanted a community site, with an e-commerce component sure, but it didn't seem that big. Well now that I've been treated to The Big Vision from the Head Cheese, I know better. This is going to be a very big, very challenging project -- made even more difficult by the fact that I'm the only web developer on the project. There's a few Java people, but no one working on the community project but me. I'm learning a lot about Django though, which is cool... now if only I can figure a way to integrate Android development and mapping, that would be pretty sweet.

The Food is Amazing

And lastly, I'd just like to take a moment to talk about how fabulous the food is here. Have I done that yet? OMG FOOD. For the most part, the primary cuisine here is in some sort of sandwich. Meat + cheese + bread = awesome. But how is this awesome? We do have those things in Canada after all. Oh no my friends, no we do not. The bread here, even the white bread from the grocery store for €0.50 is flavourful. And the cheese! OMG cheese. Simple, plain, and super-tasty. Even the slips of meat you buy wrapped in plastic taste great. Croissants, puff pastries, doughnuts... you guys, it's as if my whole life in Canada I was walking around with chalk on my tongue. Yes, it's that good.

PS

When I got home today, there was a letter from IND on the table. They have my BSN (finally). I have to go get it though, which is kind of lame, but I really can't complain. Soon, I will be a Real Person in the Netherlands!