What I'm up to?
After some fun times at AWS Lambda, I had to take a break. Whilst I love AWS Lambda, the idea of relocating back to Dublin is something I am not looking forward to, nor is my partner. Combine this with the (LE: perceived at that time) safety of Big Tech job and the answer leans towards a hard no.
Q: Why not AWS Lambda elsewhere?
I don't feel like fighting for a green visa. Besides, my partner is not a big fan of US either. The alternative would be Canada, but that's mostly for the business side of AWS Lambda. The tech area is under-represented.
Q: Ok, then why not anything else in AWS?
If I am to start from scratch, why not pick something new? Besides, nobody can guarantee that I'll have the same fun in AWS. AWS Lambda is special and I love that place, but I doubt it's AWS that makes it fun.
Ok, so what are we looking for?
- high risk/high reward -- you're young only for so long
- more chaos -- big corporations can become slow & move towards stasis; making impact is harder, less opportunities
- challenging -- maybe it's time to try some new domain, to struggle a bit? I have fond memories of first days @AWS Lambda
Enter Web3 & Crypto. 2022 is a terrible timing to be in web3, it's all "crypto winter". That said, it does map over all my requirements. Super high across all axis (less so on the high reward, but you never know!)
Domain locked.
I'll spare you the details of next steps, but TL;DR; a long list of interviews across multiple companies, spanning a few months. I've got decent offers from plenty of companies, but none of their tech resonated with what I wanted to do, nor could I leverage any prior experience.
Q: But you wanted a challenge and new things, why do you need to leverage prior experience?
I'd say it's unwise to start from scratch. I could as well start in a new field altogether (why bother with computer science, when you can do biomechanics?). But there's a lot of prior investment you're throwing away with such decisions.
Q: But why did you need months to get a job?
Well, it's not like I needed months. There were for sure jobs I could've taken earlier, but I had a few other personal constraints (such as location) to take into account. Furthermore, I was pretty adamant about WHAT I wanted to work on. So many other options were turned down.
Enter MatterLabs.
They're doing ZK rollups & would like me to join their Platform team. I've been doing platform stuff at AWS Lambda. That fits. They run infra, need code to be written, doing Rust. Their goal is to become the #1 ZK rollup, all of them up my alley.
So that's what I'll be having fun with for a while. Make ZKsync the best L2 out there.
Later Edit: My job now is to herd GPUs to the (proven) most cost efficient promised land.