I’ve had the privilege of working at Shapeways for the past 8.5 years of my career. I joined as a software engineer, eager to escape the perceived doldrums of management and get back to writing some code! I fairly quickly ended up back in management, becoming a Team Lead, Engineering Manager, and two different flavors of Vice President. And now, after many years filled with wonderful experiences, it’s time for me to move on to my next challenge in a few weeks (which I’ll write about in a different post).
In my time at Shapeways, I did a bunch of awesome technical stuff with my colleagues: wrote and open sourced a functional testing framework, turned a SPOF datacenter into globally distributed hybrid cloud, converted a php monolith to a polyglot microservice mesh, put out dozens of fires, survived 8 Black Friday/Cyber Monday experiences, quintupled our material offerings, partnered with Fortune 500 companies, expanded into 3 new production facilities, launched a SaaS platform, built an ERP from scratch that focused on 3D printing….the list goes on. That’s great, and I’m proud of the work that we’ve done over the years.
However, what I look back most fondly on at Shapeways is the people. We’ve always had exceptional people at Shapeways, people who were mission driven, dedicated to their craft and their teams, and that has been a constant over my entire tenure. Ex-Shapies have been telling me for years how Shapeways to this day holds a special place in their hearts, but only now, as I’m making my own departure, do I have the opportunity to share their perspective. Companies aren’t made or broken by their achievements, by their top-level executives, or even their products. Companies are made by their people, and I’ve been blessed to have spent most of the past decade surrounded by some of the finest I’ve ever worked with.
My biggest regret about my departure in late 2020 is that I won’t have the opportunity to say my goodbyes in person. Instead, I have to hope that this blog post, written from a small bedroom in a small apartment in New York City in the middle of a pandemic, can help me close out what has been the most life-changing experience I’ve had as a professional software engineer. That aside, I cannot WAIT until we’re all able to be together again - you can bet your asses I’ll be back for my own goodbye party once we’re able to have it. But, until then:
That I should rise and you should not
I'll gently rise and softly call
Good night and joy be to you all
Thank you, Shapeways. Here’s to you.
