Almost four years ago, Adrian posted about a job opening at this little newspaper in the middle of the country. He wrote that
World Online is […] one of the most innovative online-news operations in the world. Our main sites […] have garnered an impressive batch of industry awards — and tremendous industry attention — over the past few years.
[…]
We strive for innovation, nimble development and the use of best practices. We have a near-religious focus on doing things the right way — clean URLs, CSS, separation of content from presentation, accessibility, solid application design, etc.
Simon put it more bluntly:
This is a job like no other. […] Our unofficial mission statement […] is to “build cool shit” — and we do.
I emailed Adrian and Simon, and a few days later was flying out to Kansas for an interview; I moved to Lawrence in July. I quickly found that Simon and Adrian weren’t exaggerating in the slightest. A year later, of course, we got to show the world that cool shit we’d been building.
(If you, too, would like to get paid to “build cool shit,” check out the current job openings!)
At the very end of that job posting, Adrian wrote:
In the interests of fairness and honesty, I should mention this: There is one bad thing about working for World Online. After working here, you won’t want to leave.
With that setup, you can see where this is going. That’s right, I am indeed leaving the Journal-World. Adrian was completely correct: this is an incredibly difficult thing to do.
However, I’ve been offered every Open Source developer’s dream job. Starting in March, I’ll be spending the majority of my time working on Django.
Officially, I’ll be a software architect at a startup called Whiskey Media. Nope, no link yet. Actions speak louder than words, so we’re going to be in a quiet mode until you can see those actions. You’ll be hearing much more about Whiskey in the future, though — I promise!
I can’t overstate my gratitude to Whiskey for their vote of confidence in Django. They’re making a financial investment in Django not as some warm fuzzy charity donation, but as a calculated invested in a platform they (we!) believe in. No, Virginia, Open Source is not communist; a vibrant Open Source community creates new markets, and I’m thrilled to see that happening with Django.
So what exactly will I be doing? My job will entail a bit of internal-only closed-source development, but nearly everything I write will be Open Source. Most of my time will be spent improving Django. In the short term that’ll mean fixing tickets, working on new features, getting active branches finished and merged to trunk, and getting a one-point-omg release out the door.
I’ll also be stepping up and taking a more active role in the community. I’m only one programmer, but Django’s community is chock-full of ridiculously talented people. I hope to spend some of my time helping like-minded developers get their itches scratched. Last year I spent a few days in Boulder helping the Front Range Pythoneers kick off the Oracle backend for Django. It was a huge amount of fun, and I’m going to make myself available to other groups wanting to working on other similar problems.
Most importantly, though, I’ll be listening to Django’s community and trying to work in its best interest. A private company will be writing my paychecks (thanks!), but I’ll primarily be answering to the public, to the community. I’m counting on that community to guide me, to help me figure out how I can best spend my time. So if you’ve got ideas, let me know — don’t be shy!
All in all, this is a very bittersweet move for me. I’m terribly sad to be leaving my job at the J-W; it is, without question, the best job I’ve ever had. I’ll miss it terribly.
At the same time, I’m thrilled about my new gig. I can’t wait to spend my days hacking on Django. The best part is that this isn’t the only piece of good news about Django I’ll get to share this year. Stay tuned: 2008 is going to be huge.
Comments:
Fantastic news, Jacob! Look forward to all the good things.
Excellent! Good luck on your new project!
Very exciting news for Djangonauts everywhere.
Definitely good news for the Django community... I hope the transition goes well for you Jacob.
Many congratulations, Jacob.
Here's to this being as beneficial to you personally as I believe it will be to the community as a whole.
Very exciting news for the community, but certainly very exciting for you as an individual.
It should be exciting for you to move to a start-up environment where you get to hack on a project you obviously love. Best of luck!
Congrats, Jacob. Now I have something to look forward to this year. :)
Fantastic news, Jacob. Congratulations, and all the best with the new endeavour.
Congrats, man. I know how tough leaving LJW can be, having done it myself, but it sounds like you're doing it for all the right reasons. Good luck in the future -- and you can rest assured that, even as brilliant a programmer as you are, the team at the Journal-World is going to be just fine without you. :)
Sounds terrific, congratulations, Jacob!
I'm super happy and excited for you, Jacob! Congrats, and kudos to this quite-mysterious-sounding startup for making such a positive investment in Django and in you.
Congratulations! Sounds like a really exciting opportunity. Hope it's more sweet than bitter.
Congratulations, can't wait to see what you create!
Congratulations, Jacob. You definitely deserve it. I'm looking forward to seeing this positively impact Django in both the short and long run. It's been ready to shine for a long time, but I'm sure that having you work on it full-time will help polish it quickly.
Any other Whiskey Media positions schedule to open? Like, eh, an interface designer, perchance?
Josh: I don't know about Jacob's startup, but World Online is hiring :)
This is an awesome post, great news, and just another testament to how great this whole community is.
Good Luck in your new endeavor, we look forward to what you'll be putting out.
John
The best thing in life is to get paid doing something you love. Congrats!
Yeah, I must agree with the community comment. I've seldom been so excited about something as Django and its onward momentum. This announcement is about the coolest thing I've heard in 2008, and I'm stoked to see some tickets disappear and much-anticipated features added to trunk.
James, yeah, I hear ya. *thinking*
Congratulations, Jacob!
Congrats to you, Jacob. LJW's loss is the community's gain!
Congratulations Jacob. This is very exciting news for you personally but also for the Django community at-large. I appreciate everything you do.
Many contratulations. To you and to the Django community.
Super cool news. Congrats on the new job. Django one-point-omg FTW!
Congrats! Great for Django and great for you.
indeed a dream job. Congratulations
Congrats on the new job! Glad it is not pulling you out of the Django community in any way.
Congrats and good luck with the new job!
Wow, that's very exciting! Good luck with the new job. It seems Django is really taking off now :-)
Congratulations! Does this mean you'll be leaving Lawrence or are you staying put / working from home?
Well, I'd just like to congratulate you as well. I can imagine how exiting it must be to get the dream job :)
Good news indeed.
Godspeed, then.
Wonderful news.
May I suggest you focus some initial first efforts to getting a solid 0.97 release of Django? Sounds like the newforms admin stuff is nearly ready, along with the queryset refactoring. It would be nice to have an official release with all the newest features.
I see a lot of Django projects that won't run without using an SVN release. Satchmo and byteflow are two that come to mind. A 0.97 release would give a solid basis for many of the newer features, as well as being a step toward 1.0.
Best of luck with the new position. I'm envious.
Congratulations! The very best of luck to you on the new endeavor. And kudos to the folks at Whiskey Media as well!
Congratulations!
Looking forward to the cool stuff in 2008 :-)
Congrats, Jacob! This is very exciting news, indeed. I'm totally in love with the Django community because, as this post shows, people really do _care_.
Happy hacking!
Jacob, you and I haven't ever talked much, if at all -- missed you at the Lawrence web geeks meetup -- but I sure do wish you the best in your upcoming endeavors.
So this is like Whiskey Media paying for the development of django? This is great...
Huge congrats, dude! Seconding Simon's question: Lawrence? Chicago? Silicon Valley? London? Details! :-)
Congratulations, I think you will put your heart, sould and talent in nurturing Django even more. Good luck for everything.
My suggestion to django community:
I think there should be a support of SQLAlchemy or allow Django ORM to have multiple database connections. This way Master/Slave setup is possible. Otherwise, only option is MySQL cluster, which is expensive and data lives in RAM.
Congrats Jacob. I'd say you and django deserve this opportunity.
interesting move indeed
you always come across as a person who is gifted with both knowledge and friendliness. keep it up!
joy!
Congratulations! It sounds like great news for both you and the Django community!
Congrats Jacob!
Obligatory congratulations. ;-)
@Jay: Yeah, there's been more than one multi-db effort in Django. It's something the community is interested in, but not yet enough to bring the functionality to completion.
http://code.djangoproject.c...
http://code.djangoproject.c...
There's a bit of discussion here:
http://groups.google.com/gr...
...Of course, core functionality *is* clearly advancing-- just not on this particular feature.
Congrats! Excellent news for the Django community as well as for you.
Congrats! Glad you had the opportunity to work at such a great place. Its clear that awesome places hire awesome people. Best luck to you and World Online in all your future adventures!
Hey! Good luck, Jacob! Sounds like a great opportunity and I can't wait to see the stuff that comes out of Whiskey!
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