workin' it.

I'm interviewing a lot with early-stage companies, in search of a leadership role above that of line manager, even if temporary. The title bump always matters, much more even than an IC (Individual Contributor) role. Four years as an Engineering Manager (EM) at a well-known and successful company meant it was easy to get another EM job; they hired me directly as my first EM title, but that's far more rare, and in fact I'd spent the 3 years prior struggling to land one. I suspect that companies' reasons for not hiring EMs directly are not usually the right ones, but the end result is the same either way. They get more skittish as you go up the ladder, but now I have a neat confluence of (a) understanding why I enjoyed joining a 55-person company, and (b) having the freedom to join something even smaller.

My friend Alexa, although I'm older and helped her navigate her way into leadership, has been moving in executive circles for quite a while now, and gave me some immaculate advice about interviewing for things like Head/VP of Engineering jobs, and why that might be a better fit for me. When you're talking to a younger company, and especially at the executive level, they want to see who you are, and not just if you're comparable to another employee with the same title. Basically, I show them a Chris-shaped human, and the two sides together talk about whether they have a Chris-shaped space.

My whole life, I have been utterly unable to not be Chris-shaped, except for very short periods. I'm terrible at it. It has caused me a lot of trouble, but on the other hand I have needed to spend less time figuring out who I am. A Chris-shaped job at an earlier-stage company can save me a lot of stress, by not having to convince entrenched people they need a Chris-shaped person. Or, at least, I convince the founders and executives, and then back it up with competence.

(Or get removed, I suppose. Some of these can also turn out to be inherently time-limited, since I can most certainly pull off scaling an Engineering department to somewhere in the 30-60 range, it's rational enough for you and/or your investors to want someone more experienced in the 200+ size.)

I'm finding I learned a lot from this past job, which was not an earlier-stage startup, and it comes out in how I talk about the job, what's important to me, what I think should be important to them. I feel more rooted, and that I'm inhabiting my professional space more fully. No small part of this is that I took care of myself after Tim died, and took a placeholder job that wouldn't push me very hard.

And now I can choose what I want to do.

At Play In The Machine Shop Of The Lord

One consistent theme running through what I guess you might call "metalworkers YouTube" is the amount of time metalworkers spend on maintenance: restoring beat-up machines they bought because they have more elbow grease than cash, or fixing something that broke, or just the periodic (often frequent) cleanings and lubricatings these things require. I don't recall anyone doing that with woodworking machinery, but then woodworking machinery doesn't usually have the scale or complexity of, say, a power hammer, or the high-precision shenanigans of a lathe or milling machine.

I did finally get my lathe partly bolted to the bench: there are two feet, with two screws each, and they form a rectangle, and one diagonal pair of holes has bolts in them. I want to say that the other two holes are somehow not where they're supposed to be, but since I have flubbed both the "measurements" method and the "put sharp objects directly into the holes and mark up a target surface" method, I think it's just beyond what I can accomplish in the situation I've created for myself. I have many many ideas about how to move this heavy object around in an enclosed space. You know what would be useful for implementing said ideas? A lathe.

Following tradition, I learned a whole bunch about how the lathe is made by removing a part (to see if I could lubricate something to make it move easier), having an unexpected piece of metal fall out, and having to figure out how to put it back and have it work again. It's not magic, but it is extremely clever: basically there's a slide that moves on a dovetail channel, and the piece of metal has depressions for three set screws, and it's basically a 6-inch long wedge to make the dovetail fit tightly. How irritatingly difficult that slide's crank handle is depends on those set screws, but also on how tightly the handle is screwed on, and also if the slide fits too loosely in the dovetail, the whole system loses so much precision as to be useless.

I find this whole thing particularly engaging because historically, while I'm very good at taking physical objects apart, I have not been very good at fixing them, or indeed of just putting them back together so they still work.

I'm very good at fixing software sorts of problems, but there's no physical distinction between the act of fixing software, and the act of breaking it in the first place. Arguably software is broken by default, but that's a different discussion.

every time a door closes, you better notice before you try to walk into a closed door.

There's a lot going on behind my eyes these days. Sadness, loss, integration. I still can't read the news, really. One thing at a time, or, at least, as few things at a time as possible.

Through a complex sequence of events outside my control, I find myself between jobs again. It's not the worst thing: I have much more energy for doing errands or projects when I'm not spending my days being diplomatic to people who are making bad decisions. I'm not worried about finding another job, this time with an earlier-stage company where I can have an impact on the culture as it's ramping up. I've been able to pick up some tasks around the place, since it's Anna's turn to be working a lot.

Something I never really appreciated about machine tools is that they can just be their own project. I tried some test cuts on the lathe, and of course it was uselessly rough, but that was because the lathe bounced a little on its rubber feet, and the trailer bounced on its suspension and tires, and machine tools have to be as rigid as possible. So I go to take off the rubber feet—which I had put on when I unpacked the thing, and that sucked—and there's this whole challenge of lifting something on the bench, and it's 100 pounds, but focused in a small area, and it comes with a sheet metal tray to catch chips (the metal bits removed by machining) and cutting fluid and such. The tray isn't rigid enough to lever the machine up with. What you can lever it with are the feet of the cast-iron frame, but you have to lever the lathe up just to get to the Allen-key mounting screws holding the rubber feet on, then get the tray out of the way, the lathe on blocks and moved down the bench, then drilling mount holes through the bench, then...

I am famously terrible at this particular task of drilling holes using only measured distances. Anna is amazing at it, but even she couldn't make progress on this. I'm resorting to a brute-force tool called "transfer screws," which are literally sharp points that you screw into all the holes you want to transfer from a source workpiece to a matching workpiece. It's me saying "yes, I understand that I have the exact measurements for the mount holes, but I'm giving up and I'm going to stab my way to success."

As a DIY project, this has already held my interest more than any other DIY project ever has, and I haven't actually been able to make any parts yet. Once it's mounted to the bench, and the shed is installed, and the trailer is jacked up off the suspension, then I'll be aligning the lathe properly, and then...I can make more tools. For the lathe. You see? It's very satisfying. I could use a machinist's hammer. And some clamps. Maybe some keychains or beads or something. I dunno. I don't normally learn stuff to accomplish something; my primary hobby is learning stuff.