Some experiments and thoughts on all things from Mitchell Simoens

Next Chapter in 2017

4 min read

About 10 years ago, I was a lonely developer that was creating small web sites more as a hobby, I wasn't getting paid much by some of the people I was developing for. This was ok at the time as I needed to get different projects under my belt but I was using PHP and some libraries such as Prototype and script.aculo.us. Then I saw YUI and then this thing called yui-ext and started moving all my development onto it. Eventually, it moved on to be called Ext JS and my life was forever changed.

Sencha

Today marks my last day, I've spent almost 7 years with Sencha and have met some amazing people and have done amazing things. Quite simply, the best group of people I have worked with. Looking at myself then and to today's Mitchell, I can see a lot of changes and this was largely due to the people who have helped and mentored me. In my tenure at Sencha, I've served many roles from the professional services team to support, marketing, core developer and even IT team. Each team has always taken me in and helped me in more ways than they will ever know. I truly cannot thank these people enough and count them as lifelong friends (if they can put up with my hashbrown jokes). In fact, there were a couple people that I have met through working at Sencha that were in or attended my wedding.

I've also been able to meet a lot of great people both in person and online from the community. I have seen a lot of growth in my dev relation skills; being challenged all the time may not be fun but I've come to appreciate it and see ways to benefit from these encounters. I'm just short of 40,000 posts on the Sencha Forum and I hope some of them posts have and will continue to help people.

Also, I hope Sencha Fiddle continues to be updated as new releases are released. If I had to pick one thing from Sencha that I'm most proud of, it's Fiddle. Fiddle has done so much to help both Sencha employees (collect bugs, provide examples to developers) to the community and I hope it continues to provide the a great benefit.

My Future

As fate has it, when this acquisition was announced publicly, I saw a tweet. So I brushed up my resume (which a free GlassDoor resume review told me to just rewrite it) and applied to Modus Create along with more than twenty other jobs I found while looking around. While I was one of the lucky few that were not being laid off immediately, I thought this may be the time to look for an opportunity where I can continue to grow and spread my wings and going through Modus' interview process I was granted an offer and have accepted it. I had to make a tough decision as I was in the middle of two other interviews and their coding challenge portion of the process but I felt Modus would give me the greater chance to grow more as a professional. Basically, it boils down to I've been doing one thing for over a decade and it's time for a new challenge.

So on Monday (September 25, 2017), my new endeavor with Modus Create will start. One chapter is closing and a new one is starting. I'm very excited to be looking at a new challenge, challenges have been the fuel behind my growth and I see nothing but positive things ahead. I will not be working with many of my Sencha colleagues anymore and that makes me feel very sad, this change is bitter-sweet, but I know I'll still be in contact with them and they will go on to do more amazing things. This makes me very excited to see them conquer their own challenges. If they ever need me, I'll always be right there for anything they need.

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Written by Mitchell Simoens who is a long time nerd developing software and building computers and gadgets. Anything expressed on this website are Mitchell Simoens's alone and do not represent his employer.
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