ben_dewaal on Nostr: It is with some sadness that I must announce that as of the end of last week, I am no ...

It is with some sadness that I must announce that as of the end of last week, I am no longer at Swan.
For those of you still reaching out in DMs regarding open positions, I am no longer the person you want to talk to. Please try Yan Pritzker or Cory Klippsten instead.

Despite my departure, I do still count Swan among the companies in this space with the highest levels of excellence. Having hired over half of the engineering team personally, I can say that I count all of them as the best colleagues I've ever worked with.

I know some may be curious why this happened. I don’t believe it serves anyone to go into details, so I’ll just say that my skills, experience, and management style no longer align with how they want engineering to be run. I disagree with but accept/respect their opinion on this.

I am currently in talks with an early stage startup regarding a very interesting project that I hope to be able to join, so I don't think it's going to be long before I can announce something there assuming we can come to an arrangement that suits both sides.

That said, I am available right now and open to other discussion/offers.
If anyone is looking for a senior engineering/product lead (e.g. CTO/CPO or senior VP) with a wealth of experience in team growth, system architecture, and long term strategic thinking, please do reach out.

I'm especially interested in any projects focused on real world Bitcoin adoption and/or education, with a long-term, large-scale vision that I can help shape correctly and help the company/project avoid the pitfalls of massive technical debt that so many projects fall in to.

I'm not interested in simply being a "middle man" between engineers and non-engineers. I can do this 'translation' very well and am happy to do it as a part of the job, but I have much more to offer than that.
The ability to exercise my creativity is very important to me.

I'm also not who you want if you want someone to write code for a web/mobile app. My professional coding experience was largely in realtime control over large hardware devices (office printers) and low-level image processing algorithm work; not "apps". It was also 10 yrs ago.

Where I bring a lot of value to engineering work specifically is in shaping engineering teams to get more achieved, with better architecture, in less time, and with less people than more naive managers can do.
I've grown teams in companies ranging from multinationals to startups.

This, combined with a keen understanding of product design and the intersection between product market needs and engineering capabilities positions me as *the* person that you need if you've got an idea and money to do it but not the real world knowledge of how to make it happen.

I can of course provide CV/resumé and references if requested, but I also think my reputation in the Bitcoin space should at least get my foot in the door with any company that needs someone with my skill set and experience.

My DMs are open for anyone who wants to reach out either with an interesting opportunity or just to chat.
As above, I'm a little sad and disappointed to be leaving Swan at this stage (especially that amazing team I built) but I'm also excited for what the future may hold.