Back to What I Really Love

This early career reflection from 2009 shows Kenneth's commitment to working with technologies he finds meaningful rather than pursuing purely financial opportunities. The essay demonstrates his early understanding that professional fulfillment comes from alignment between personal values and technical work. This principle would later influence his approach to open source development and community building.

A couple of months ago, I took a position at a company that tailors Microsoft SharePoint solutions.The business model was very strong (and successful), the work was challenging, and there was lots of opportunity.

At the end of the day though, I just couldn't get past one thing: Microsoft and.NET. This is not stuff that I wanted to spend the rest of my life.

The company offered very generous compensation for Microsoft Certification – but what good does that do me?

I could do it, but it would only be for the money. I love working with software of all kinds, but the development I was doing did not sharpen my skills in any way.

So, I decided that the longer I stayed, the more I would simply be delaying my leaving. So another opportunity came up, and I decided to take it. I am now a developer working with PHP, Symfony, Java, Groovy, Grails, Apache, and more. The list grows every day.

Now life is good.The conclusion reveals Kenneth's joy in working with open technologies and diverse programming languages. The mention of PHP, Symfony, Java, and Groovy shows his early embrace of open-source technologies that would later become central to his career. This decision to prioritize technical growth over financial incentives foreshadows his later contributions to the Python ecosystem and open-source community. It's never been better in fact.