I’m making some pretty radical life changes. Today’s my last day at Twitter. Claire and I are moving to Seattle. And I’m taking a step back from the law: starting in late March, I’ll be spending 19 weeks training to become a web developer at Dev Bootcamp.
Confused? I get it. Read on!
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I’m proud to have achieved the professional goal I set out for myself almost 8 years ago: become a Product Counsel at a revolutionary tech company. It’s been an incredible journey, allowing me to work on cutting edge issues and products with extraordinary people. I’m very lucky and humbled to be where I am, and to do what I do.
I also treasure my legal education and training. I’ve learned so much about our country, our Constitution and our justice system, and tech law issues like copyright and privacy that originally drew me onto this path. I’m a better person, a better citizen, and better professional because of it. When I look back, I have very few regrets about the choices I’ve made or the experiences I’ve had.
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But!
I’ve been doing this for a little while, and I’m increasingly convinced this is not the career path I’m meant to stay on. There are certainly many things I like about being an attorney, and I like to think I’m good at it. But I don’t love it, and there are a few things that I dislike quite a bit. Knowing that life is both short and long, I’ve decided that it’s time to explore a new trajectory.
Am I sure I want to stop being a lawyer? For right now, yes. There’s certainly a great variety of attorney roles in the world — but I’ve worked with or near a lot of them, and they just don’t appeal to me very much. And while there are “legal-adjacent” roles that could potentially leverage my attorney experience, those aren’t calling out to me right now, either.
What is calling out to me is a desire to build and create things for the Internet. I’ve always been passionate about computers and technology. In fact, the law was really just the avenue I chose to work with technology, because I thought it was the most suited to my existing skills and experience. I’d never really considered the possibility of learning how to program and having a more technical career. It always seemed like it was just “too late.”
But that didn’t stop me from dabbling. Over the course of running several blogs and websites, I’ve loved tinkering with the HTML and CSS to change how they look and function. I sometimes spent entire days on it. Last year, I took myself through Codecademy’s Ruby course, and more recently, through their Javascript and Git tutorials. It comes naturally, and more importantly, I get energy and satisfaction from it.
So, to coding bootcamp I go! In a couple weeks I’ll start the first phase of Dev Bootcamp’s 19 week program, where I’ll be learning Ruby, Javascript, HTML, CSS, and a lot more. I can’t wait to get started and see what comes next.
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Changing careers has also opened up an opportunity to change geographies. Claire and I have long wanted to move to her hometown of Seattle. We love the Bay Area, our apartment, our neighborhood, and the friends we’ve made here. But as we’ve thought about where we want to be long term, and especially where we’d want to raise a family, it’s always been Seattle. Claire has a lot of family there, we have good friends waiting for us, and the real estate market is slightly less insane than San Francisco (though it’s catching up!). I’ve spent enough time in Seattle to know that it will very quickly come to feel like home.
It’s all going to be a great adventure, and I think a really positive change. There’s a lot of hard work ahead, and there will be many moments when I wonder if we’re doing the right thing. But I think I have pretty good instincts, and they’re telling me this is what is meant to be. And knowing that, I’m excited and happy.