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I jumped from a small startup to a larger company in 2021 because I was getting bored with the work after a few years and felt that I had stopped growing. I needed a new challenge, and I have some goals that I recognized moving to a larger company would help me grow to achieve. I also wanted to be paid more because the amount of time and work I put in the compensation wasn't competitive. At the much larger company there are many learning programs available to me, stock with value, and more compensation.

I did enjoy wearing many hats and carrying a lot of responsibility for a while, but the pay wasn't worth the stress. I'd like to revisit working at a startup again some day, maybe after I've reached more of my professional goals and bring more value to a company than just code.

I first got into coding at 15 after chatting with the admin of an MMORPG private server I played on often over IRC on QuakeNet. Eventually I discovered that there was more than QuakeNet, and a group of moderators from forum network I followed had an IRC server. There I made a couple of friends and started learning PHP, getting into building my own websites.

I enjoyed it a lot, and I decided that as I got older I'd start my own company building apps! It grew from there, getting my first job locally and a couple of years later joined a startup.

We use Intercom so our users are able to open up a chat and leave us feedback or get help when they need it.

From there we do some very light tagging that is looked over in a short monthly meeting.

We open tickets for bugs (as they come in) so they can be addressed.

I've found it difficult to hire full-stack developers with at least a year of react experience. Interviewees usually only know enough to be dangerous, or have experience with Node/JavaScript and express interest in growing on the frontend

Hiring those same people has gone really well, similarly becoming comfortable after a few weeks of working with react

I like to think I'll be a VPE or CTO

Still not sure how to get there, but in the last 2 years I've had the opportunity to be involved in the building and planning around a product and I know that's what I want to keep doing.