I spent almost two years working at a small energy startup in Copenhagen called Reel. This is what I learned from my experience.
Be pragmatic with the available resources
After working at large technology companies, I was indoctrinated with many best practices that did not always work well in a startup environment. There are about 30,000 software engineers at Google and there were two software engineers at Reel. When there are limited engineering resources available, maintenance can rapidly become a big cost. We never created a staging environment and there were many manual processes we didn’t automate. Sometimes these decisions created friction when processes happened more slowly than expected or bugs were released. But I am convinced that we benefited overall from decisions to keep things simple and low-maintenance.
The energy industry is ripe for climate impact
I joined Reel to make an impact on climate change. Although no new green energy was added to the grid while I was there, we were making progress. And the Reel model is not the only way to transition the energy industry. Renewables are already the cheapest electricity generation available, but there are many technical issues to making them reach their potential. All of these issues are great opportunities for engineers to make an impact on climate change and I plan on staying in the energy industry going forward.
Work visas are complicated
When you are living on a work visa your personal and professional lives are intertwined. If you want to change jobs or move between countries you need to make sure there is no gap in visa coverage. Your personal decisions impact your professional life and your professional life impacts your personal decisions. After working for more than six years in a country where I am a citizen, I was not prepared for the additional life complexity of work visas.
Working at a mission-driven organization is great
Not only does it feel great getting up every day to work on something I care about, it is amazing to work with people who feel the same.
Since I care about what Reel is trying to achieve, I didn’t mind doing low-skill or boring tasks while working there. I was more focused on impact than on my personal growth and advancement. As the most senior engineer at a company, it can be hard to get good professional development. But if the main goal of taking the position is impact, professional development can take a backseat.
I don’t like Java
I had written Java at Amazon and Google for almost 5 years before joining Reel. After spending two years writing Elixir at Reel I learned that Elixir is a great language I hope to use more in the future. And even more importantly I learned that I don’t like Java and would prefer not to use it professionally in the future.
Java is a very slow language to learn and write. I feel I am already better at Elixir than I ever was at Java (even after passing through the Google Java readability certification).
Working with founders is tricky
Founders of growing startups are chronically overcommitted. They often use prioritization shortcuts like “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” or “first in, first out” which can be opaque or inconsistent. This issue becomes complex to navigate when trying to collaborate with founders or when blockers appear that only a founder can resolve.
I wouldn’t discourage someone from taking a job where they would work directly with founders. But in general, positions that allow for autonomous decision-making and self-sufficiency will work better when reporting to a founder.
Conclusions
I joined Reel because I wanted to work at a startup in Copenhagen where I would have the opportunity to impact climate change. It was everything I hoped it would be and more. I am forever grateful for the experience, and especially for the people I got to meet and spend time with.
Leave a Reply