Today is an exciting day for me: I've started a new role as Senior Engineering Manager at AllStripes, a healthcare startup unlocking new treatments for people with rare disease.

Choosing AllStripes for my next adventure came down to thinking in terms of a few frameworks. Notably, Will Larson's thoughts on a 40 year career in tech guided me. Working at a high growth org inside a big company like Home Depot enabled me to optimize for meeting lots of people... I met hundreds if not thousands of technologists in my 5 1/2 years with Depot. AllStripes, on the other hand, is small enough to be on a first name basis. Meaning I can be Jon O or even just Jonny or Jon again, rather than Jon Oropeza who's one of many engineering leaders named Jon or John. What I'll be optimizing for at AllStripes is rapid learning and meaning from the mission we're on. I've been thinking all year about more meaningful work, something towards the heart of the hard problems I see facing the world. Working to advance healthcare research is a great fit in that regard.

The path to AllStripes was through a focused search that I undertook this fall, and following something similar to Jason Crawford's template I was able to target roughly ~30 orgs, mostly in that Series B - Series D range, each with an appealing mission. I met with the 7 out of ~30 that had openings for engineering leaders. I got more than one offer, and it was AllStripes that won my heart, even though we're earlier and smaller than I'd initially intended my next opportunity to be.

I have a lot of thoughts on leaving Home Depot, if you're interested I collected them in a Medium post that seems to have resonated well. Actually, looking at the reading stats, this might be one of the most read things I've ever written, probably up there with times when my work was published in various San Diego area periodicals back when I was actively writing fiction and poetry.

I'll likely be pretty quiet through the Holidays, as I'll be focused on my first 90 days and getting settled into the team at AllStripes. Next post should be some thoughts on planning for 2021, and in particular a collection of the frameworks I use to retro the year that was and plan the year that will be.

In the meantime, if you're interested in working with me either again or for the first time, AllStripes is hiring.