When I joined Netlify, my welcome packet included a coffee mug that read "I ♥ Netlify", with the company logo shaped as a heart. I started using it a lot, so much so that after a few months the dishwasher had completely wiped the heart off.

As I drink my morning coffee, the mug that now reads "I ___ Netlify" feels like a word puzzle I'm being asked to solve. How do I feel about my work? Why did I join this company, and why am I still there after almost six years?

¶ How I got here

The story goes back to 2015. I was a big proponent of API-first systems and of the architecture that would later be known as Jamstack, and I had just released Staticman, an open-source project that brought user-generated content to static sites.

Netlify was emerging in that space, so I sent a cold email introducing myself and the project, asking whether they could help me host a version of Staticman for the community to use for free.

I got a reply from Matt that same day.

We got on a call and spoke about the project, the ecosystem and the company. We didn't end up partnering at the time, but I distinctly remember leaving that call feeling that there was something really special about what Matt was building, and that I'd love to be a part of it somehow.

Life went on. I stayed close to Netlify as a user, and a couple of years later I decided to reach out again. Going back through what I wrote at the time, I find this part quite telling of how I felt:

Have you ever been in a situation where you're perfectly happy with your job, but you have something else that has been in the back of your mind for a long time that you would absolutely love to be doing? That's sort of how I feel about Netlify.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: if you ever consider hiring an engineer to work remotely from Europe, can we please chat?

We kept talking, but couldn't make it happen for one reason or another. And yet, I had an inexplicable certainty that I would be very happy working there, so I kept pushing, on and off, for years.

It wasn't until 2021, six years after the call that had sparked it all, that I finally joined the company.

¶ Making up for lost time

As soon as I joined, a clock started ticking. The role I was hired for was a level below what I was aiming for at that point in my career, and I took a pay cut to accept it. I felt I had to prove my value and somehow make up for lost time.

I started working as hard as I possibly could and entered a vicious/virtuous cycle of taking on more work, feeling energised by the impact I was having, growing as an engineer, and feeling confident enough to take on even more.

Pretty quickly my job became more than what my job description said, and both the depth and the breadth of my work kept growing.

Almost six years in, I've done a bit of everything, working across the whole stack and across different disciplines. I've driven entire features end-to-end and led parts of the product strategy.

¶ Work-life balance

My relationship with work is complicated. I love what I do and I feel incredibly privileged to wake up every morning to do something that fulfils me. But I have a problem of dosage.

I can't compartmentalise work into a fixed set of hours every day. I don't really switch off. I work whenever I feel there's something I can do to make our product a little bit better — and there's always something.

This means that working evenings and weekends (of my own volition) has been the norm rather than the exception for years. And even when I'm not at the keyboard, I'm usually thinking about a challenge I need to overcome or some new wild idea I want to try.

That level of intensity is taxing and comes with sacrifices, which I mostly see one group of people signing up for: founders.

I have many friends who went on to build their own companies (some of them quite successfully) and they all give it everything they have. It makes sense, since they're building something of their own, with huge potential upside, even if it's a moonshot.

I see a similar level of drive and commitment in myself, except I'm not a founder.

¶ The nontrepreneur

Sometimes I think about why I'm not trying to follow that path myself, and the running thesis changes over time. Do I lack a certain set of skills? Maybe I don't have great ideas.

But right now I think the answer is in the coffee mug: the company I'd love to build already exists and I happen to work there.

If there were a mail-order service for building a company where I could cherry-pick the mission, the vision, the values and the people, I suspect I'd end up with something that looks very much like Netlify.

So maybe it is foolish of me to be running around like a founder in someone else's company, but I don't think I know how to show up in any other way.

Yes, I've done a bit of everything, but there is still so much to be done. The project I'm now leading is one of the most ambitious and rewarding of my career. I have no idea what comes next, but as long as I keep growing, I think I'm in the right place.

Anyway, I'm done with my coffee. The mug is going back in the dishwasher and I'm going back to work. ∎