My last day at M Shanken!

(written by lawrence krubner, however indented passages are often quotes). You can contact lawrence at: lawrence@krubner.com, or follow me on Twitter.

The end of a very long year: yesterday was my last day working at M Shanken, the publisher that creates Wine Spectator magazine and Cigar Aficionado. They initially hired me for a 3 month contract, but then that was extended a month, and then another month, and then another and another, till I had worked a little over a year. I joked with my friends that I had just finished the longest 3 month contract in history.

There are good people there and they are doing good things. Towards the end of my time there the other members of the tech team quit, so that the company faced almost 100% turnover in the space of 60 days. That was unusual. It was right around the time that the company decided to take tech seriously, invest in it and make the team bigger. The folks who were hired these last few weeks all seemed very interesting and talented.

One of the oddest things about my contract was the way it was incrementally extended, so that I always thought my job would be over in 4 weeks, and this for months. I was free to work, and bill, for long hours, so at first I put in a lot of time. I thought I was running a sprint, but I was actually running a marathon, and after a while I felt burned out. I think it would be safe to say that I enjoyed the first 6 months there, but the second 6 months were stressful. Adding to the stress was that I was given what people thought would be a quick, 2 month project, but it was really enormous. After 6 months of working on it, I was perhaps only 60% done.

Now I get to work on my own software for a few weeks. I am insanely excited about this.

Post external references

  1. 1
    http://www.winespectator.com/
  2. 2
    http://www.cigaraficionado.com/
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