TL;DR; I’m looking for a select few, high caliber software engineers to join me. If you think you’re it, drop me a line. Let’s chat. https://different.com.au/careers/
Some of you may already know the story about how I gave up a comfortable, high paying job in the financial trading systems industry with ten years of C++ experience, and basically bet my career on JavaScript.
After a painful (and financially punishing) two-year apprenticeship/sabbatical to master everything about the web technology stack, I applied to join a relatively small startup. Again, I gave up two higher-paying and more “prestigious” opportunities to do so. Because when I looked at their tech stack, played around with their product and looked at how they worked, I sensed that they were going to do something big.
Seven years later, I’m happy to say that both bets have paid off spectacularly. JavaScript is the lingua franca of the web, and Sysco LABS (Leapset when I joined) is a technology powerhouse that is possibly Sri Lanka’s most sought after employer of software engineers as of this writing.
Time has come for a third bet.
When I learned about :Different late last year, a job switch was the last thing on my mind — I was quite content with my previous job. But then I met their team, saw their product and their strategy. Ten days later I was telling my boss (who I consider a mentor to this day) that I’ll be leaving to join :Different, because if I didn’t, I’d regret it for the rest of my career!
For those of you who don’t know, my new boss, Mina Radhakrishnan, was Uber’s first Head of Product and prior to that, a Product Manager at Google. Ruwin Perera, co-founder and Mina’s other half, is from the Global Business Strategy team at Google, to which he moved from the Boston Consulting Group (one of the “Big Three” in consulting). Rukmankan Sivaloganathan, their Sri Lanka Country Head, you probably already know of from his work in the startup space.
While their tech stack — JavaScript, React, Node.js, GraphQL, MongoDB, ElasticSearch, AWS — is very impressive, what really did the trick for me was their no-nonsense approach to engineering: asked about how they test, their engineers immediately pulled out their test scripts and showed me a test run, live. Asked about how they deploy, they ran a CI pipeline in under a minute. Asked about their engineering standards, they pulled up and showed me their code. Everything was show-and-tell. No buzzwords. Not a Powerpoint slide in sight. Everything just worked.
Needless to say, I was sold.
And now for the punchline. I’m looking for a select few, high caliber software engineers* to join me. If you think you’re it, drop me a line. Let’s chat. https://different.com.au/careers/
* What’s important to us? Critical thinking skills, learning ability, good communication and integrity are a must. Tech skills (JavaScript, React, Node.js, AWS) go without saying.
Apropos of nothing, here’s a picture of my cat, Noodles.
