Pastures new—from Sense to Venturelab

From mid July, 2008, I was employed by the fantastic Sense Internet as a web designer/developer. It was amazing, going from a nice small agency to a much larger entity was a massive but incredible leap for both my career and me personally. However, a mere 18 months on, I find myself somewhere else—after a year and a half of working with wonderfully talented and amazing people on some superb projects, I tore myself away.

Photo by Simon Wiffen.

Sense Internet

I applied the job at Sense when I was 17. My interviewer was my soon to be boss and Creative Director Tony Jacobs. Just from seeing the company and meeting Tony I knew this was where I wanted to work.

After starting at Sense on 14 July, 2008, I got to meet some amazing people, who were excellent at their jobs, great to get on with and an all round top team. I worked on a range of projects of varying sizes with different roles and responsibilities. I was allowed to exercise my skills, and learn from others. I could voice my opinion in as much as I listened to what others had to offer. It was an excellent creative and skilled environment.

One of Sense’s greatest assets is its people and it provided me with friends, colleagues, and above all my beautiful girlfriend Suzanna. We were both fortunate enough to work with people who became good friends to the both of us. Working with someone you’re in a relationship with, some would say, is inadvisable, but I loved every minute of it. It was something that made my next decision all the more difficult…

The decision

After, for one reason or another, losing friends, colleagues and mentors from Sense things began feeling a little different. It’s more than fair to say Sense was still an amazing company, and probably the best I have will ever worked for, however things just didn’t feel the same. I had no views to leaving Sense at all, I was still happy there, until I was granted an opportunity to work once more with the massively talented Dan Metcalfe, and my previous ‘mentor’, Simon Wiffen.

That opportunity was to work for entrepreneur Justin Whitston at his new startup, Venturelab. After meeting Justin and hearing his ideas, as well as his business plan and impressive portfolio, I was loving the idea of a fresh new challenge. Over the next month I had some really big decisions to make.

I could stay at Sense where, owing to their position, I had the chance to shape a team and become a senior developer. I would stay with friends in a job I was more than happy with, working with and for some great people. Or, I could take a risk, up and leave and work with two friends for a brand new company building websites for entrepreneurs and, whereas Sense worked with large household names, on unknown projects and clients. It was traditional agency work vs. a chance to work in a more fast paced business centred environment.

Venturelab

After much deliberation I decided to head to Venturelab. I wasn’t really ready to leave Sense, but opportunities like this don’t come around that often. It was something I had to do now, while I could. Being 19 I can afford to take career risks right now that maybe I couldn’t later on.

So, as of 11 January, 2010, I was employed by Venturelab. I miss Sense and all its wonderful characters and working environment a lot, but the idea of new challenges is exciting to me. I now have the opportunity to break away from your ‘typical’ web work and a chance to help businesses really grow. Plus the technical aspects of being a web developer at Venturelab is amazing—I have submitted and had accepted a proposal for the dev team to adopt a progressive enhancement approach across the board, using CSS3 as standard on all builds.

Sense people: Amy Littlefair, Simon Wiffen, Matt Tarbit, Ben Tappin, Wes Mason, Dan Metcalfe, Connor Wilkinson, Jonny Stirling, Richard Harwood, Mark Barrett, Gemma Lawson, Gaz Battersby, Vince Pickering, Andy Mason, Rob Farnell, George Kamsika, Darren Armstrong, Suzanna Haworth, Aidan Cook, Paul Allen, Dan Bentley, Tony Jacobs, Ro Ramtohul (sorry if I missed anyone).

Final word

Working at Sense was the most amazing experience I’ve ever had. The work, the people, the company, everything. I do almost feel like I wasn’t ready to leave, but Venturelab was an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up on—the new environment, the chance to work with Si and Dan once more and an opportunity for more varied responsibilities.

I’d like to thank Sense; the people I met, the opportunity I was given, their faith in a 17 year old developer and the amazing environment in which they ‘employ’ their team (I use the term employ lightly, as Sense never felt like a normal job). It has been an absolutely fantastic time—with too many good times to even try and remember—and I hope we cross paths again sometime in the future.

To Aidan, Sense, and everyone there; thank you.
Harry

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Friday, January 22nd, 2010 in Personal.

Career Work