Python changed my life. It spoke to me. It was the exact level of abstraction and concision I needed to provide leverage to my work.
I introduced Python at a startup I worked at called Addepar. They told me to knock it off. This is a Java shop. So I built more. I created more than a dozen Python projects, solving for data onboarding, internal tools, analytics, data ingestion, data processing, and so on. Suddenly, we had production Python code.
And then it behaved unexpectedly. “Where are the tests? Where’s the rigor?” they asked. Okay, we can fix that.
I wrote tests, I introduced docker for development, CI, and deployment. I built continuous delivery to production. And suddenly the Python stack is more advanced than the Java monolith. Okay, I guess we’re not just a java shop anymore.
So how does one pull this off? You need to be in an environment where people don’t say no. Or better yet, where you don’t need to ask. This place we used to refer to geographically as Silicon Valley. I suppose now it’s more of a virtual thing.
I was already 10 years into my career at this point. I worked in aerospace and I worked in quant finance. These are interesting domains, with lots of structure and cultures that are risk averse. Startups, for the right person with the right mentality, offer a high-trust environment for people to experiment and find novel ways to add value.
So when I was at Addepar I held a weekly meeting called Python office hours. The whole company was invited. It probably appeared as if - and I probably thought this at the time - I was teaching people Python. But actually I was recruiting.
As of today, I have hired five of the regular attendees at Opto. How many had a computer science background? Technically one, but he was working as a data analyst. Today two are high-level individual contributors, two are senior engineering managers, and one is the head of product. All of them go deep in context. But that’s a topic for another day.
So Python was my gateway drug, but what’s the moral of the story? Find the things that speak to you. Push, and keep pushing, until you’ve built something amazing. And if you can’t pull this off at your current job, maybe join us at Opto.