In December 2016 I left Canonical with one sad and one happy eye, with lots of good memories. Now it’s time to revisit some more!

Starting at Red Hat back then was quite a cultural shock, of course. I got used to the new headwear fashion quickly:

But never really to the rest of the formal dress attire:

The drinking habits I was familiar with, and I quickly learned enough Czech to get “dvě piva prosím”:

At Red Hat we practice a very disciplined Agile software development, our sprint planning and execution was impeccable:

But don’t get fooled by the happy smiles – competition between team mates is fierce!

Joking aside – Red Hat has been an awesome place to work. Admittedly I was a bit sceptical at first to join such a big company, but that was relieved very quickly. In the last nine and a half years I’ve met so many talented and friendly people here. I really appreciate Red Hat’s commitment to Free Software: In all that time I have hardly done any “private” stuff, all the magic happens out in the open.

My primary involvement was with the Cockpit project. By now I have left my little footprint and it has grown dear to my heart. This has been a true “full-stack” experience, from investigating fleeting kernel races over integration with podman, libvirt, or FreeIPA, over understanding HTTP and browser security behaviour, writing TypeScript, all the way to UX and UI design and accessibility and usability testing.

I’m proud that as a team we have built a product that has been rock solid across many operating systems and many years. We could do major changes like landing the Python bridge with hardly a hiccup. Matej Marusak even got our team cake for that!

I also enjoyed my excursions to Anaconda installer, OSCI and Testing Farm, Linux System Roles, and most recently, Hummingbird, and hopefully could help out a little there, too. Turns out software is like laundry - it’s never truly “done”! 😀

A big Thank You! to everyone I had the privilege to work with. It really did feel like a big family, and I’ll certainly miss you. Fortunately, the FOSS community is so well connected that you never really say good-bye for good. 🫶

A few weeks ago I was invited to join a tiny Berlin startup Amutable. That came quite as a surprise to me, but I feel honored and excited! I’ve felt the urge to go back to systemd/plumbing/low-level OS design every now and then, and this is too good an opportunity to pass. I’m looking forward to working with these fine folks during my next life chapter, and being in an org where I actually know everyone personally. The adventure will start on June 1st.