Thought Confetti #7: My Work Life, Lately
Fractal Bootcamp, our new office, and how lucky I am to have such good friends.
Dear Readers,
My life has been a flurry of activity lately. Preparing for the baby to come, hosting a month of events and co-working at our new campus, furnishing said campus, and finalizing a Bootcamp curriculum for our students...
I don't know how to talk about it all with you, or even with myself. I feel somehow simultaneously caught in a whirlwind and unable to communicate with anyone outside of it. But I suppose I say all this as an attempt to talk through it all, anyway...
As for my work life, I started fractalbootcamp.com, in case you missed it! We're teaching people to code, and placing them in 6-figure jobs; a trade school approach. Everything is in-person, in-community, in New York City. I think too much of our working life is done in isolation -- we apply for jobs alone, do trainings alone (and increasingly online, in our bedrooms), and work alone. This makes "work", something that should feel like the pinnacle inspiration and challenge of our relatively short lives, feel like a chore. Work is something that we do merely to pay the bills; but it doesn't have to be that way.
Work could be a quest to conquer increasingly intense and interesting challenges, in conspiracy with your best friends and colleagues. Work could be a culturally beloved part of growing up together; a process of growing stronger together, so that we can collectively accomplish great and beautiful things. When I was in a symphonic band, I was one part of a grand organism, a literal symphony, and each part would WORK HARD so we could collectively play more and more interesting music. Career training could feel this way, but instead it often feels like doing chores so that you can go home and live your regular life.
We even have a meme for this: "work-life balance". What could the popularity of this phrase mean for our relationship to work, I wonder? Is work not an integral part of my life? How could I "balance" them, when one is a part of the other? Or is our integration of work into the meaningful narrative of our lives so twisted and forced that we dissociate entirely from it; considering it separate from our actual life, which only begins and ends during the brief hours between when we clock out in the evening, and when we turn the lights out to sleep for the night.
Tirade on work aside, I am so happy to be working again, and to be working in education again; one of the great loves of my life.
I should say, if you are interested in this project at all, I'd love to talk to you, whether you want to nerd out about software or potentially are interested in attending the bootcamp! I'm still in my "talk to 1000 people" phase of the project, so please book time on my calendar directly here.
I'm lucky to say that I've started this school with my best friend, and one of the very few men my age who I would without hesitation trust with my life and my family's wellbeing. It's a wonderful feeling to work with someone I trust so deeply, because I don't need to second guess anything, and I don't need to pull punches when I disagree. We both know that we will succeed if we keep morale high and work hard for years, and so we've structured the business to do just that.
Another thing I love about Jake as my co-founder is that he just gets me. I have a weird working style -- it's a blessing and a curse. I'm the R&D engineer archetype. I absolutely adore new, exciting, revolutionary projects -- when I have a project I'm excited about, I can hardly be stopped... I'll write about it, advertise it, prototype it, and make it happen by the time the day is out, if I can.
On the other hand, if I'm not excited about a project, I'll drag my feet, stew in my thoughts, and spend more time writing and thinking about new revolutionary ideas than actually executing on the existing good enough ideas that are right in front of me. I also spend a lot of time resting compared to average. The glamorous view of this rest is Rich Hickie's Hammock-driven Development. Great ideas come from weeks in the Hammock, not from months in the mines; or so someone with my working style would like to believe. The cynical view is that I'm lazy and unfocused!
In reality, I'm a pragmatist and have to work with what I've been given -- I understand the impact of this working style, and I understand its downsides. I've spent a lot of time and energy creating a social environment where I can leverage my strengths and mitigate my weaknesses. By living around ambitious friends, entire projects can get launched off the ground in a weekend (like Fractal University, for instance), which suits my style perfectly. And when projects need to be maintained, I form co-working groups who will help me stay focused week to week so I can win in the long-game.
But even still, I think many co-founders would look at someone like me and categorize me as someone who spends too much time on distractions, side quests, and rest. My erratic work schedule doesn't help the characterization.
Jake doesn't see me that way, though; I think he sees me as providing a valuable and even irreplaceable function in the messy and chaotic process of starting a startup. I provide energy, new ideas, prototypes, projects, funding (my style is more suited to pitching investors), community, and side quests which might turn out to be crucially important business functions, one day. He trusts my judgment, and knows that, when push comes to shove, I will work quickly and effectively under pressure to keep things from failing in war time, even if I'm a bit of a chaos monkey during peace time.
And likewise, I recognize that Jake is disciplined, responsible, strong, smart, and high-executive-function. When he says something will get done, it gets done; I don't need to check in on him, which frees me up to do my work without stress that things are going unmaintained (a crucial component of any creative process).
I'm thankful to be so blessed with good partnership, in my business and personal life.
What else is happening in my work life? Well, we just opened our CAMPUS!
It's 4200 sqft of beautiful original factory wood, and a 5000 sqft rooftop. It's right at the intersection of two major Brooklyn train lines, the L and the G.
The place feels like a steal, and I think the students will love working here.
I'm trying to fill the space during May with friends, community, and events to keep us company! We don't have anything else to do with the space, while we wait for summer classes to start in June. So if you know anyone who would want to work here, or host an event here, put me in touch!! (email: ajroberts0417@gmail.com)
I'm also planning internship and "externship" projects for our bootcamp students this summer, which has been exciting. The idea is simple:
1. Jake and I (Professional Engineering Managers) work with your engineering team to scope a useful, but non-urgent project; just like an internship project.
2. Bootcamp students sign up to complete these projects.
3. We project manage the students so your team doesn't have to (though, you can if you want to!)
4. You get free project work; Our students get free training, experience, and resume-padding.
I think eventually (and rather soon, actually) we could get so good at completing and scoping these projects that we actually spin out a front-end consulting agency or something, and students could earn money on consulting contracts before they even exit bootcamp!
I'm excited and driven by my work at the moment, which feels amazing. It feels like I can seriously help people develop hard, technical skills (and good careers!) while also helping my city build a technical workforce that can do the sort of technology R&D we will need to be leaders in the 21st century. (Also, I have a slight chip on my shoulder that SF is the tech capital of the US, when NYC should be the obvious winner. All's fair in competition, of course, and they're winning -- but not for long, if I have anything to say about it!)
Talk soon, don't be a stranger!
Andrew