After four and a half years, I will be leaving Schematic for Yahoo!. My first day with Yahoo! will be April 5th, where I’ll be working from their Atlanta office. I’m not at liberty to tell you what I’ll actually be working on, though…sorry! I look forward to joining the ranks of former Schemers Robert Swarthout and Paul Amsbary, and fellow PHP community members such as Derek Gathright and Sara Golemon.
I’m sad to make this move as I’ve seen Schematic grow from ~120 people up to near 400. We’ve added offices around the globe and entire business units. I’ve had the opportunity to work with some incredibly talented developers, technology leaders, project managers, and account managers. I’ve worked on some amazing projects with some of the most appreciative, cutting-edge clients you could ever ask for.
Before joining Schematic, I worked for Community Connect Inc. (now Interactive One) for almost five years, building and maintaining functionality across various social networking sites, such as BlackPlanet.com, AsianAve.com, and MiGente.com. I enjoyed this product-centric environment where any developer could take ownership of a product, then watch it grow and flourish over time. These opportunities are a bit more rare in the agency world, where you’re generally building, delivering, then moving on to the next big effort.
I’m very excited to get back into a product-focused environment. I’ll have the opportunity to sharpen my skills with client-side technologies, along with other languages and platforms. I’m very much looking forward to focusing 100% of my time on architecture and development as I might have gotten a little rusty over the past year or two.
So, thanks, Schematic! It’s been fun, but it’s time for me to perfect my Yahoo! yodel. Best of luck to you!