Today’s my last day here in the Boston office. At the end of the week I’m heading back to the great white north of New York. I’ve written enough about what I’ve hacked on during my time here, I’d rather wrap up with how others have made the past few months awesome.
The group
If you’ve got a local Ruby group in your area, go to it. The members of Boston.rb are some of the brightest folks I know, even if they’re just learning Ruby or venturing out into bold new languages and territory. The talks and hackfests have been immensely valuable, not to mention the post-meeting (and sometimes pre) drinkups. Watching others build their own Ruby/Rails projects and hearing their own war stories was fantastic. I also managed to attend NHRuby as well, which was a lot of fun. It’s tough to beat a group that can manage events every Tuesday of the month while keeping the content fresh and the beer flowing.
The place
Let’s just say I was used to more of a square environment, and our “bullpen” was a refresh. At thoughtbot, pretty much everyone is out in this main area of the office. This has been central to how we work: it simply lowers the barrier to collaborate with others. It also helps with answering quick questions or having impromptu meetings. The office’s location in Downtown Crossing has also made it fun, not only for random street performances/shouting going on outside, but it really feels like we work in the heart of Boston.
The people
My fellow robots were programmed to do two things: to get stuff done, and enjoy doing it. Whether it was learning the philosophy and reasoning behind testing or exploring the nuts and bolts of an application, these guys were stellar and deeply cared about their work. Each day was pretty much a blast: entering with a theme song, getting together at the morning standup, having lunch (occasionally way too early), and hilarious discussions on Campfire I’ll never forget. The drive to continually improve, be it patching Suspenders to add commonly used tools, being proactive community bloggers, or honing our process for both clients and our internal products has had a great impact on me. Being this professional while having so much fun is no easy task, yet it’s a daily routine here.
Thanks for the past 6 months, everyone. I’m going to miss Boston.