A Welcome Delay

I quit full time employment at Mendeley in Feb 2012 to move to Spain, learn web development, and work full time on my own projects. I’d actually quit the same job in the same company 2 years before, that time to make a film and travel the world. So it probably didn’t come as a complete shock to my colleagues.

The plan was set back temporarily when my manager asked if I’d be interested in working on the CSL Editor project as a freelancer.

Reasons it sucked:

• I was itching to start work on my projects

Reasons it was awesome:

• It was open source
• Plenty of users desperately wanted this feature, so it was very likely to actually get used
• It was a prototype, meaning that producing a working website with actual users was considered a bonus, not a requirement
• It would be good practice in web based technologies
• The extra income would give me a longer runway when it came time to start my own projects
• Many people were skeptical that a user friendly CSL Editor was feasible to make, it would be fun to prove them wrong!

Needless to say I accepted. I learnt web development as I went but only billed for time I felt productive, which meant occasionally working long hours. In the end we made a working editor I’m very proud of, it’s made editing CSL good enough for a far larger audience than before. It was definitely the right choice.