Many people say the job market is a mess. Fewer people find themselves on a layover relocating for a job only to have the second leg of the trip cancelled as a war broke out mid-flight. This was the situation I found myself in one evening in New York—and I began to form a new plan. There was a mysterious place I had heard of, from internet celebrities and Stanford peers, where programmers could go to build… things. It wasn’t all that clear to me actually but everyone I knew who had done it was very cool and I had yet to try living on the East Coast so I checked the window for applications, saw there was about a week left before the summer batch, and the rest is history.
Recurse gave me the resources—both technical and personal—to do the best work I’ve ever done. I was able to hack on projects I had long imagined but never had the time for, and pursue new ideas with wild abandon. On my first day in the office I showed up to a hackathon partner-less, and said that I was looking to make progress on a code forge. Someone else had shown up alone as well, and volunteered. Josh, fountain of git knowledge and the world’s premier ZIP expert, became a good friend. On my last day in the office, I one-shot a prototype dreidel game at a hackathon for the Playdate console. In between these bookending coding sprints, I discovered that everyone at the Recurse Center had arrived with their own profound specialties and interests. I was no exception: some things I made there have ended up on this site.
Some notable occurences and accomplishments from my time at the Recurse Center have yet to make their way into the public eye. Frank nerd-sniped me into a hardware project of grand scale that I am still working on. When it’s done it may very well be my magnum opus. Keith tricked me into learning Gleam, and I have gone on to become a huge fan of the language. I also picked up Ruby and Rust, though I didn’t end up trying a Lisp as I had hoped. I met Filippo, creator of age, and he mailed me stickers that are now on my bike. David planted the idea in my mind that “project people” should have a truck, and four months later I test-drove a Rivian R1T…
Working at Recurse is a high-agency playground. If you enjoy shooting off on productive tangents—as I do—there are enough toys there to keep you entertained for a long time. Apply yourself and you can turn the 3D printers, retro computers, ESP32s, and ultrawide monitors around you into something wonderful. Or somethings wonderful! And while doing so, you’ll pair with incredible folks, present your work to a large audience, and hopefully become a better maker yourself. You are the only one in charge and there is no guide. I enjoyed that. In many ways it felt like a natural extension of the d. school’s philosophy of “learning by doing.”
I was chatting with a good friend of mine over summer, describing Recurse, when she posed a good question: “How is this going to change what you’re looking for in a career?” It’s true that I have yet to see a job posting for Person Who Builds Funky and Impactful Open-Source Stuff and Eats at a New Restaurant Every Night. But there are aspects of Recurse that I will look for wherever I end up next. I enjoyed the variety, the personal responsibility, the creative control, and the balanced blend of impressive goals with relaxed attitude. These qualities made the the work feel special. If you’re working on something with purpose and you think you can provide the above, do reach out.