New job, and new career path
Some of you who follow me on Twitter may have noticed recently that I’ve been talking about working for a new company. This week is my first week working for Salesforce.com. I’m really excited about the move for a number of reasons, some of which I’ll go into here.
As of this past Monday, I’m now a full-time iOS developer, instead of being limited to evenings and weekends. I’m a new addition to an amazing team of developers at Salesforce.com developing apps to be released to the App Store, utilizing their amazing cloud-computing infrastructure. From a technology standpoint this is right up my alley, and the company seems to have a great commitment to quality, agility and a good work environment.
This is a big change for me not only because it’s a new company, but because it’s an entirely different identity. I’ve always referred to myself as a “Web Developer” when asked by friends, family, etc. For 15 years I’ve worked in the web space, developing server- and client-side applications using Perl, JavaScript, and any number of other technologies in between. But now when people ask, that answer no longer fits. So starting this week, I have a new identity in my career.
I’ve always preferred to be on the leading edge of whatever technology it is I’m working in. When I started, I wasn’t content simply building static sites; I pushed myself toward dynamically-generated sites. When that became the norm, I instead focused on multi-lingual and multi-view sites. That later turned into rich client-side applications, which later became known as “Ajax” webapps. In recent years this too has become a bit passé. This is what drew me to mobile development in the first place.
While I’ve been developing mobile apps for the past 2 years, I now can officially refer to myself as a professional iOS developer. It feels good.
P.S.: I’m still continuing my work on my own personal iOS app business Decaf Ninja Software. I’m continuing to maintain my existing apps, as well as develop new and interesting apps. I learned to develop mobile apps through my side business, which is what launched this new career direction. It only makes sense to continue that practice to improve my skills in areas such as Core Audio, OpenGL-ES and other more meaty areas that my work at Salesforce.com may not include.