You know what’s better than snacks and a kegerator? Being treated with respect

And not just personally, but as any developer will probably tell you, being treated like a “feature” factory isn’t just frustrating, it alienates you, too.

In the beginning

There was only one company that believed enough in me to hire me as-is; a brand new, fresh out of code school developer. Truth be told, it was my senior developer who believed in me after a few interviews. Management, the CEO, only cared that I was “affordable” aka cheap, but Adam Baker (re: senior developer) was confident my raw abilities would translate into serviceable programming skills with a little patience and mentorship. I will always appreciate him pulling the trigger and bringing me to Chattanooga.

The gig was great at first because I didn’t know any better. Adam did his best to shield me from the bullshit, but curious me wanted to pry into the dark corners, and what I found soured me. Actually, it soured both of us; being tugged from pivot to pivot, great idea to great idea really wore us out. He was pragmatic, hoping to build a flexible platform while I was enamored with all the cool things I was “taught” in code school. In the end, he left for a remote, higher-paying position where direction wasn’t an issue. As for me, they decided to save money by having me “serve” as THE developer. Not senior, just sole. My mistake was thinking I was a hotshot and could do it all, and their mistake was letting me try.

A lot like a car wreck

Naturally, my eagerness and lack of experience left me scrambling from fire to fire trying to put out what I could. I had never deployed an app outside of Heroku, front-end had a painful learning curve, and it was my first experience working with a design or product team. The results were less than stellar, and upon the realization that I was way over my head (and after another 3 pivots and arguments over features, a realistic timeline, etc.), I decided to start looking for a new position. That in itself was scary, given my original employment search, but I was confident I knew what a good fit looked like now.

For me to succeed, I needed to 1) join an established team, 2) shut up and listen, 3) be low on the totem pole where mistakes weren’t critical, and 4) peers I could relate to.

You’d think finding all of your must-haves would be either impossible or take a great deal of time, but again, like so many times before, I lucked out. Number 4 on my list (relatable peers) allowed for the unlikely to happen; my new job found me before I knew to look for it.

Build it and they will come

I joined AngelList because being on the ground floor of a company appealed to me (and always will) especially one that actually gave a shit about its mission. Although, I had never heard of Spire (formerly LK), once their CTO (now CPO) Michael Brooks Jr. (now my boss) threw me their elevator pitch, I knew it was a place I would be proud to work.

Now, a year later, I was right.

Spire hasn’t just given me a place to work, it’s provided me a programming and life sandbox to fuck things up. We have a great development team (shout out to Lee Adkins, Rob Scott, Brian Bowden, Adam Tootle, and Michael Brooks Jr.) who all have your back if things go south (and they usually do for at least a minute).

Sometimes Lee and Rob joke that Spire will lose me to some gig in Scandinavia (or passionate furniture design at IKEA), but the truth is, as long as Spire and our team treats me with the respect we all deserve, I plan on being just as committed to them as they have been to me.