{"id":769,"date":"2011-07-18T14:36:04","date_gmt":"2011-07-18T21:36:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mitchmckenna.com\/blog\/?p=769"},"modified":"2022-12-31T00:04:08","modified_gmt":"2022-12-31T07:04:08","slug":"im-joining-the-team-at-gdgt","status":"archive","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mitchmckenna.com\/blog\/2011\/07\/im-joining-the-team-at-gdgt\/","title":{"rendered":"I&#8217;m Joining the Team at gdgt!"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>What is gdgt?<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/gdgt.com\" target=\"_&quot;blank&quot;\" rel=\"noopener\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"789\" data-permalink=\"http:\/\/mitchmckenna.com\/blog\/2011\/07\/im-joining-the-team-at-gdgt\/gdgt-logo\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mitchmckenna.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/gdgt-logo-e1310963153754.png?fit=198%2C97\" data-orig-size=\"198,97\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"gdgt-logo\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mitchmckenna.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/gdgt-logo-e1310963153754.png?fit=198%2C97\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mitchmckenna.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/gdgt-logo-e1310963153754.png?fit=198%2C97\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-789\" title=\"gdgt-logo\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mitchmckenna.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/gdgt-logo-e1310963153754.png?resize=198%2C97\" alt=\"gdgt Logo\" width=\"198\" height=\"97\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Wait, you haven&#8217;t heard of <a href=\"http:\/\/gdgt.com\" target=\"_&quot;blank&quot;\" rel=\"noopener\">gdgt.com<\/a>? One cool thing about joining gdgt (pronounced &#8220;gadget&#8221;) is that most of my friends have already heard of it. It&#8217;s a social network for consumer electronics; a place where people can create lists of the gadgets they have\/had\/want, and find out more about those gadgets. With the latest redesign there&#8217;s a focus on Q&amp;A and <a href=\"http:\/\/gdgt.com\/reviews\/\" target=\"_&quot;blank&quot;\" rel=\"noopener\">Reviews<\/a> (who do you trust more than your friends?). You can ask or answer questions like &#8220;Should I Switch to the Verizon Iphone?&#8221; or &#8220;Is Netflix Worth it on the Wii&#8221;, or read reviews on gadgets your thinking about buying. I&#8217;ll let <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Veronica_Belmont\" target=\"_&quot;blank&quot;\" rel=\"noopener\">Veronica<\/a> take it from here&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/23703166\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2>Why the change?<\/h2>\n<p>I&#8217;ve always wanted to work for a company who builds a product I use. Haven&#8217;t you ever used a product and been like &#8220;damn, I wish it had this feature!&#8221;? Or better yet, if your a developer &#8220;I wish I could just code this feature for them!&#8221;. If you can find a company to work for that&#8217;s building a product you would have liked to create anyway, something you can be passionate about, then work doesn&#8217;t feel like work any more.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s what drew me to gdgt, I used the site since they were in beta. I even went to their launch party in &#8217;09 (watch <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=d6cZSAiaNCw\" target=\"_&quot;blank&quot;\" rel=\"noopener\">TWIT at gdgt Launch Party<\/a>) &#8211; I just so happened to be interning in SF at the time and got a chance to attend with my friends <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/frankleng\">Frank Leng<\/a> (checkout his <a href=\"http:\/\/frankleng.me\" target=\"_&quot;blank&quot;\" rel=\"noopener\">blog<\/a>), <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/sevendaggers\" target=\"_&quot;blank&quot;\" rel=\"noopener\">Jaime Wheeler<\/a> and Tom Hill. The event went over so well by the way, it spawned a whole events side of the business.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone who knows me knows I&#8217;m pretty addicted to social networks, and have always been fascinated by the social web, so being a developer, getting the chance to help develop a existing social network seems like a great fit.<\/p>\n<h2>Joining the Startup Scene<\/h2>\n<p>I&#8217;ve always wanted to join a startup, it was one of my main reason&#8217;s for moving from Canada to SF, and this is the time in my life to do it (I&#8217;m young, no wife, no kids, no major debts, less risk). I&#8217;ve worked for corporations all my life (Web Developer at <a href=\"http:\/\/quinstreet.com\" target=\"_&quot;blank&quot;\" rel=\"noopener\">QuinStreet<\/a>, Data Warehouse Architect at IBM, SharePoint Developer at <a href=\"http:\/\/cognos.com\" target=\"_&quot;blank&quot;\" rel=\"noopener\">Cognos<\/a>), all jobs I&#8217;ve been lucky enough to say I&#8217;ve enjoyed and learned a lot from, which I&#8217;m thankful for and is often not the situation when working for 500+ employee corporations. I honestly don&#8217;t believe I&#8217;d be able to say I&#8217;m at where I am today without what I&#8217;ve learned at those companies. In particular I learned a lot while I was a web developer in the education vertical at QuinStreet (they run hundreds of high profile websites like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.schools.com\" target=\"_&quot;blank&quot;\" rel=\"noopener\">schools.com<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldwidelearn.com\" target=\"_&quot;blank&quot;\" rel=\"noopener\">worldwidelearn.com<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.onlinedegrees.com\" target=\"_&quot;blank&quot;\" rel=\"noopener\">onlinedegrees.com<\/a>), both from the projects I got to work on (including a new found love for PHP Framework <a href=\"http:\/\/codeigniter.com\" target=\"_&quot;blank&quot;\" rel=\"noopener\">CodeIgniter<\/a>) while I was there and the amazing co-workers I now consider friends.<\/p>\n<p>My parents thought I was crazy at first, &#8220;why would you ever give up a reliable job at a successful corporation?!&#8221;, but they came around and my family&#8217;s been supportive of &#8220;going after your dreams&#8221;. They understand times have changed since they were my age, it&#8217;s not about the &#8220;9 to 5 and get out&#8221; lifestyle anymore, there&#8217;s less of a bridge between your work and personal life now-a-days, so you better find a job you enjoy.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m going to get the chance to work some amazing people; founders <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ryan_Block\" target=\"_&quot;blank&quot;\" rel=\"noopener\">Ryan Block<\/a> (former Editor-in-chief of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.engadget.com\" target=\"_&quot;blank&quot;\" rel=\"noopener\">Engadget<\/a>) and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Peter_Rojas\" target=\"_&quot;blank&quot;\" rel=\"noopener\">Peter Rojas<\/a> (Co-founder of Gizmodo and Engadget), and a team of great <a href=\"http:\/\/gdgt.com\/about\/\" target=\"_&quot;blank&quot;\" rel=\"noopener\">developers and designers<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>How It Happened<\/h2>\n<p>Now here&#8217;s an story for you; an example of how people can end up getting jobs in our industry has changed. Like I said before, I was already a user on gdgt and I was getting a lot of emails (gdgt sends you an email when one of your friends does something on the site like asks a question &#8211; it&#8217;s actually a great feature), so <a href=\"http:\/\/gdgt.com\/feedback\/add-settings-for-frequency-of-emails-and-bulk-email-notifications-ea5\/\" target=\"_&quot;blank&quot;\" rel=\"noopener\">I posted in the feedback section<\/a> that it would be great to have settings for bulk email notifications, like once a day, or once a week (quite an entertaining post now).<\/p>\n<p>Ryan replied to my feedback, that night, at like 11pm (how many founders do you know are responding to feedback at 11pm on a Saturday?) and said it was on the roadmap &#8220;but we&#8217;re constrained by how hard it is to find awesome developers to add to the team. Did I mention we&#8217;re hiring? Even Canadians, Mitchell!&#8221;. I was impressed, that he was willing to do a little background check on me had caught my attention. Ryan pulled my email out of the system (not sure if they&#8217;re allowed to do that, but I won&#8217;t tell Ryan \ud83d\ude09 ) and contacted me directly. I fired off a link to <a href=\"http:\/\/linkedin.com\/in\/mitchellmckenna\" target=\"_&quot;blank&quot;\" rel=\"noopener\">my LinkedIn resume<\/a>, we had a phone interview and an in-person interview with the team, and the rest ladies and gentlemen is history.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll keep you guys up-to-date of course, <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/mitchellmckenna\" target=\"_&quot;blank&quot;\" rel=\"noopener\">follow me on twitter<\/a> for more real-time posts, and don&#8217;t forget to <a href=\"http:\/\/gdgt.com\/profile\/mitchellmckenna\/\" target=\"_&quot;blank&quot;\" rel=\"noopener\">add me on gdgt.com<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/mitchmckenna.com\/blog\/2011\/07\/im-joining-the-team-at-gdgt\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permalink to I&#8217;m Joining the Team at gdgt!\"><p>What is gdgt? Wait, you haven&#8217;t heard of gdgt.com? One cool thing about joining gdgt (pronounced &#8220;gadget&#8221;) is that most of my friends have already heard of it. It&#8217;s a social network for consumer electronics; a place where people can create lists of the gadgets they have\/had\/want, and find out more about those gadgets. With [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[147,149,148],"class_list":{"0":"post-769","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-archive","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-career","8":"tag-gdgt","9":"tag-startup","10":"h-entry","11":"hentry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p92wZA-cp","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mitchmckenna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mitchmckenna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mitchmckenna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mitchmckenna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mitchmckenna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=769"}],"version-history":[{"count":70,"href":"http:\/\/mitchmckenna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1528,"href":"http:\/\/mitchmckenna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769\/revisions\/1528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mitchmckenna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mitchmckenna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mitchmckenna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}