something special

Bonnieux, Provence, France

Google being scary. Here are some filters for my search “chicken legs marinated”.

Happy Mother’s Day! For this occasion, I will keep my eyes closed in all photos. (Taken with Instagram at Flugzeug Spielplatz)

Kicking’ this train building up a notch. Bridge time. (Taken with instagram)

Today was a big day — I signed with SoundCloud and will be starting June 1 at a new job. It’s been a long road to get here, but the time is right on both sides.

A little over 1.5 years ago, I considered leaving Nokia for SoundCloud, having been at Nokia for two years and starting to run out of patience with the many things grinding my gears. But with little Luisa due to be born shortly thereafter, I decided sticking it out at Nokia was the right thing to do for me and my family. I changed positions at Nokia anyways, built up my own little team, learned a bunch of new and very useful technology and don’t regret that decision in any way.

Fast forward to about 10-months ago and everything seemed to be repeating itself. Me getting sick of Nokia, looking around for work, talking to every startup within earshot and another chance to join SoundCloud. The decision that time was more difficult since there were suddenly a lot of options. Berlin is bursting with interesting, passionate startups ripe for success. I chose to go to Amen however for a few big reasons — small team, secured funding, potential and the possibility to learn and do some interesting new work.

The last 8-months at Amen have taught me a lot. I remember now what it’s like to work at a startup, to wear lots of hats every day, to be excited about product again, and most importantly, I learned about the things I have come to value as an employee and a software engineer. In the end, it just wasn’t the right situation for me.

Then along came SoundCloud, once again. This time around, everything fell into place very quickly. The culture is solid, the product is proven and the team is flying. The work I’ve been wanting to do (search, machine learning, natural language processing, large-scale architectures, yadda yadda) is now more of a concrete reality at SoundCloud. This is big stuff for me! Don’t get me wrong, it was at times a difficult decision since I still believe in the team and product at Amen, but I went with my gut on this one. I’m not one to quote, but I think this sums it up nicely.

When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In the important decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of our nature.

Thanks Freud.

Long story short, I’m super excited to be finally joining the SoundCloud family in a few weeks! But first, a vacation…

Awesome doodles about the German language, by an ex-pat Aussie, Carla. Do follow.

sabine:

joshdevins:

My first cup of coffee. Ever. (Taken with Instagram at Amen World HQ)

Yeah, but did you drink it? 

Ricki made it. I drank it. All of it! Apparently the look on my face was, “like a kid who just had their first taste of alcohol”. I have no doubt…

My first cup of coffee. Ever. (Taken with Instagram at Amen World HQ)

Faust on a single 70x100cm page.

(via fabian, se)

(via medformat, everydaydude)