Three jobs pointed in three different directions.
Facebook was the deeply technical choice. The conversations were interesting, but the work leaned further into programming than I wanted to go.
Shutterstock looked like a great career move. It was a larger New York technology company with real scale, a strong business, and a skill set I wanted to learn.
Reality Check Network was the entrepreneurial choice. It was small, messy, creative, and built around data centers. I could get involved in almost everything.
Peek's financing problems made staying feel less responsible than leaving. I had spent weeks thinking through the options and finally decided to take the CTO role at Reality Check.
I was about to turn twenty-six. Four years earlier, I had been making $45,000 a year, living three thousand miles away, and eating what I described as a steady diet of beef jerky and chicken wings. I had no idea what the next four years would look like either.
That uncertainty made the decision easier.
I could make the safe move later. I would still be me, still have a market, and, as I wrote at the time, be the right age for middle management. For now I wanted to work hard, feel driven again, and try something disruptive in a part of technology I genuinely liked.
Reality Check ran infrastructure for customers. I saw room to build stronger network services, improve the hosting platform, create better operating systems for the team, and help the company reach larger customers. The role was not limited to keeping servers alive. That was the entire appeal.
I sent the decision to people who had helped me think it through. The note was upbeat, blunt, and more certain than I probably felt.
Passion now. Safe move later.