Weeknote wb 8/04/2019
By: Ian Ames
Tags: Government, Delivery, New Job, Leaving, Weeknotes

I’m going to play this week backwards because today has been huge.

After 15 years at HM Land Registry, today I handed in my notice.

I’ve been offered a job at Surevine and I have accepted it. I will be Technical Lead for a very nice team (who I met on Wednesday, more to follow) building software to enable people with very high confidentiality requirements to collaborate (amongst other things).

I don’t know what this means for weeknotes yet but I will be signing lots of scary looking security documents in the next few weeks.

Tom Cruise saying “it’s classified.”

Surevine is a 100% remote company which for me was a big sell, not only because I live pretty far from everywhere (there I finally said it Emily Webber) but as a person who helps teams work effectively together, the remote collaboration thing is an interesting challenge.

At the moment I’m 50% excited, and 50% sad. It’s hard to let go when you have been somewhere so long, that has nurtured you so well. The people at HMLR are genuinely awesome. My current team are really fun to work with and are trying to solve a complex problem for HMLR. I have no doubt they will succeed with the many hurdles they face and I will be rooting for them from the sidelines.

Surevine has been a pleasure to deal with, everyone is pleasant and have nothing but nice things to say which makes me very excited for the future. On Wednesday I was in Bristol for the final stage of the interview process. I wasn’t feeling great as the day before I had been really ill and laid up in bed. I seriously doubted I would make it in. On Wednesday morning I hopped on the train and go up to Bristol.

I rocked up to the old Evening Post headquarters which was an odd experience. Coming from Bristol the Evening Post has a special place in my heart as our local rag. With the decline of the dead tree press, the building is now partly a coworking space.

Wallace from Wallace and Gromit, reading the Evening Post surrounded by sheep. The headline is ‘Gromit gets Life, rustling rascal to do porridge.’

Once there, I met Viv and John in real life and JB and Adam via video conference (using daily.co, a pretty nifty web-based VC) the interview process was actually a lot of fun, it was a ‘day in the life scenario’ whereby I talked to a ‘client’ (excellently role played by Adam) to understand their needs and priorities. I then discussed the job with the team and ran a sprint planning session. Then I was introduced to Paul from product development and we had a discussion about switching client priorities and the need to pinch people from the team. Finally, we wrapped the whole day up with a retro about the whole process.

I found it a great way to show my skills compared to a standard interview. I find interviews for delivery roles very difficult to do as its all about enabling the team and establishing the ‘we’. Usually, this goes against the usual interview practices of talking about what I do, I find it very difficult to distinguish the difference often.

The rest of the week has been a bit of a blur. The team did our second round of user testing I didn't sit in on any of the sessions this week as I’m trying to get things squared away. We sent our first show and tell. We had to record it as our usual slot clashed with our internal DDAT conference last week. We are getting a feel for what our solution could look like technically. We are progressing well but there is lots still to do.

The A team, who are OBSESSED with Africa by Toto.

Having just written that, it's interesting I’m still thinking in terms of us. I don't think me leaving has fully sunk in yet. I haven’t agreed on a date for leaving yet, perhaps that's why? Maybe it's too big a change to fully process yet?

Anyway, that's probably all I can manage for now if you fancy working with me in future, Surevine are recruiting! https://www.surevine.com/jobs/

In other news.

The girls have been off for Easter this week, last weekend we went for a lovely walk on Dartmoor, I must admit to having mild daydreams about working out of the van on the moor, I’m not sure Dartmoor phone signal is up to it! I took this photo on my crappy old Wileyfox which I quite like, Freya looks tiny surrounded by trees!

Photo of Freya walking down a path surrounded by really big pine trees.

It was the last code club before the Easter holidays. My partner in crime Sam is also waiting to hear about a new job, he has applied to be a rocket scientist, I really hope he gets it! We are always looking for volunteers so if you fancy giving it a go, check it out: https://codeclub.org/en/volunteer