Yesterday marked the end of my first month at Go Daddy. To state my assessment right off the bat, I can’t think of a single negative thing to say. Well, okay, the parking is a little crazy and my cube is on the exact opposite side of the development suite from the two people I’ve worked with on the two products I’m an engineer on. If those the worst things that happen to me in my career here, then I’ll count it unabashedly wonderful.
Being distant from my immediate co-workers forces me to get up and walk a ways when I need to talk to them face to face. It’s a nice break from coding, writing specs, and just being in front of the computer. I try to take walks around the building twice a day besides since I don’t want to get the spreading hiney that is endemic to desk jockeying.
Even the parking isn’t a bad thing. Sure there’s about half as many spots as there are employees and going out for lunch inevitably means exile onto distant streets, but the fact that everyone tolerates it tells me a lot. Most companies are quite profligate: spaces get full and they open up new locations or build fancy new buildings. Sure, it’d be nice to have a parking garage but I’d rather have a financially healthy employer much more.
Go Daddy, like most startups, seems to operate on the principle of making do until it’s unavoidable. As a frugal person, I can appreciate the fiscal hesitation. They spend money on the things that make them money and plow the rest back into the business. In that sense, Go Daddy is very startup-like.
Development-wise, I couldn’t have asked for a more dream job. Okay, I would much rather work for Apple or Google but I don’t have nearly enough skills or experience for that. Plus, I don’t particularly want to ever live in California. To top it off, I am working on a product that suits me perfectly. I can’t say anything about it, but I think it has the potential to make my career.
Finally, it’s been very refreshing to be able to talk about work without fear. The policy basically just states that I can’t disclose anything non-public and have to end every blog entry about Go Daddy with the disclaimer below. It all seems fair to me. I really don’t speak for Go Daddy, after all.
We’re hiring a lot of .NET engineers so if you’re a competent .NET engineer that I know, send me an email expressing your interest and I’ll forward it along to the right person.
[UPDATE (6/13/05): I completely forgot to mention that my cubicle rocks. I’ve got lots of desk space, a shelf for books, my own personal white board, and dual monitors.]
[UPDATE (6/20/05): Holy crap! I just realized that not only does my box have a gigabyte of RAM, which is awesome, it’s got two 2.8 GHz Pentium 4s. Wowowowowow!]
[NOTE: The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Go Daddy Software, Inc.]