christopherowen.id.au

Don’t blink, or you might just miss a significant fraction of a year. I’ve made that mistake.

Over three months ago now, I left my position as Technical Lead on Atlassian‘s Confluence team. It’s still an odd thing to state. I still believe that Atlassian is one of the best companies in Australia to work for as a software or technical support engineer, especially if Java development takes your fancy. Some of the most passionate and knowledgeable Java developers I have ever known work there. I’d like to thank everyone at Atlassian for their tremendous work and invaluable friendship. I had a truly memorable, enjoyable and productive three years there; they will always be a highlight and serve as a formidable benchmark.

But I’m a hopelessly restless person. I still feel like such an amateur in many respects. I’ve been developing software professionally for coming on a decade now plus many years tinkering with programming before my first paid position and I still feel I’ve much more to learn. I crave new experiences and problems. As such, I’ve taken a new position, working as a software engineer at Silverbrook Research. My first project is being built using Ruby on Rails, something I’ve wanted to learn but never managed to find the time along with everything else I want to do. My new position offers some unique opportunities, and I’m excited to be involved. I hope to blog more about my experiences using this platform.

The wheel keeps turning, and there appears to be never a shortage of interesting problems to solve, or interesting tools to help solve them. Even after all of this time, I still love doing what I do, and working with people who love what they do too.

Fellow Atlassian Mark Chaimungkalanont has just posted a summary on the mammoth undertaking that was Atlassian’s eighth FedEx day. (We deliver!) A huge congratulations to all participants; it’s always a very exciting time to be at the office when every single engineer at Atlassian is furiously banging out fresh code and fresh ideas.

This was a somewhat emotional FedEx day for me, being almost precisely a year from FedEx Day 6, when things took an unexpectedly bad turn for me and began what was without a doubt the most challenging, and changing six months of my life. I made it all the way to the end this time and I feel so much better than I ever, ever thought I would during those scarily dark days.

I’m also fairly proud of my monstrous creation as well.