inessential by Brent Simmons

Omni

I start my new job as a developer at the Omni Group today. You already know them and their wonderful products, and I’ve expressed my admiration for them here on my blog many times.

But, before I talk about how I’m excited for this new job, I’ll reassure Vesper users: Vesper will continue, and I will continue as its developer.

It’s in great shape, actually — we’ve done the heavy lifting of designing and writing an iOS app, writing client sync code (that’s shared between iOS and Mac apps), and writing and deploying the sync server. And we have good work in the pipeline.

Plenty of work — lots of work — remains for Vesper, but we’re over the biggest hurdles, which is great. We’ll keep at it.

I love that I get to work on both Vesper and on Omni apps. Omni is one of the great Cocoa development companies, and they’ve grown slowly and steadily over many years. They write lovable productivity apps — not just great iOS apps but also great Mac apps. They’re generous to and respectful of their users, employees, and the local development community. Their values and ambitions align perfectly with mine.

And for me it’s a chance to do something I’ve never done: to work on a large team with lots of products and lots of users. To be part of something not just a little bigger than me but a lot bigger than me.

I could have shopped around and talked to other companies (including Apple, I suppose) — but I didn’t. I could have considered contract programming as a way to bring in extra money, but I know myself well enough to know I’d hate it.

Instead, I wanted to work at Omni. And now I am.