There and Back Again
One Staff Developer’s tale on leaving and returning to SSENSE
SSENSE has been a part of my life since 2016, and in retrospect, it is clear how rewarding and full of opportunities this experience has been.
I first joined the company as a senior developer, and soon started acting as a tech lead, creating an exciting new brick and mortar retail strategy, then raising from the ground up the first SSENSE customer-facing iOS mobile application, and all of that while being one of the staff representatives driving the company towards the latest technology trends.
The word “new” came up very often, and my team and I were involved in this process of re-inventing the SSENSE approach to technology. When working on the greenfield projects mentioned above, we often left our developer comfort zone and actively participated in their innovation. Finding solutions that were not thought of, testing new patterns not yet used at the company, and either gathering the answers from our stakeholders directly or being able to suggest them.
The feeling of creating something and owning it made for close ties between team members, creating friendships both in and out of the office. To this day, although some have moved on to different projects, we still keep close tabs on each other.
The Decision to Leave
4 years into my journey — and after completing several important releases — I began to feel it was time to map out my next big assignment. Personally, starting the development of something, means driving that development past the finish line, and it seemed like the perfect moment to choose between one of the SSENSE internal projects or exploring the market.
Naturally, SSENSE was a good fit and had a lot to offer, making it hard to accept a role at another company when it was offered to me. As tough as it would be to say goodbye to the colleagues who became friends and the interesting projects I was involved in, I felt ready to make the leap, and had all the encouragement I needed from my management and peers.
Positively anxious about entering uncharted territories; and with little to no break in between, I started on my new job, with a new role, a new work model, and even a new country. I quickly confirmed what could be somewhat expected: that no two companies are alike, what works well for one, might not for the other and each solution you may have added to your toolbox over the years must be adapted to your new reality.
For instance, imagine a classic trunk-based development flow, something we have successfully implemented at SSENSE. Although under the right circumstances this can look like the obvious solution for continuous delivery, it requires the right safeguards to be put in place. At SSENSE, a few of those safeguards were high-test coverage and feature flagging. But, in my new job, we interpreted them as ephemeral test environments and canary launches. It was the same end solution, but with two different ways to achieve it. Both equally valid and adapted to the company mindset.
While applying all that I had learned at my new job, learning a new business model and a new problem space, I couldn’t help but miss much of the culture that I experienced back at SSENSE. Sometimes intangible as a concept, but this is one of the particularities that convinced me I wanted to move back. Take for instance the transparency and open communications we experience via recurring vision-setting meetings, such as our tech all-hands and company all-hands. During these meetings, representatives from each team highlight objectives, define their way forward, and report on results in a way where everyone knows what is happening, along with the benefits and impacts the tech team brings to the company.
Not taking this next move lightly; and in search of more of a cultural fit, I reached out to a couple of companies who had piqued my interest in the past while re-opening a dialogue with SSENSE. After a sequence of interviews, meeting several teams, and getting to know their cultures-at-a-glance, I was sure of my choice.
The Journey Back
With many different product development lines — and the Engineering department doubling in size while I was gone — when I joined SSENSE for a second time it was much like starting at a new company. There were new colleagues to meet, new challenges to solve, and new projects to drive. What I would have expected to be a familiar place, seemed completely new and exciting.
With this fresh perspective, I was able to both see and appreciate the added focus towards things like machine learning, the growth of our architecture team, and additional investments in the development of our next generation of software. I also saw how those initiatives were now backed by new work models, including remote offices and developers distributed across the globe. And while these initiatives may have been seen on the horizon back when I left, it was great to have them now as my new reality and an opportunity for me to contribute to, and do so surrounded by some of the familiar faces I had come to miss.
It’s now been a few months since I’ve rejoined the SSENSE team. In looking back at my journey, I’ve noticed an almost contradictory appreciation for both the familiar, and for change. Whether you are considering SSENSE as either a new or “boomerang” employee like me, I have found that it’s the diligence, speed, adaptation, and a person’s ability to know when to simplify that makes the journey their own. As Gandalf says at the end of The Hobbit: “You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!”
