Thread about “why did you decide - after 20+ years of security work - to do something like optimyze, which is about efficient use of computing resources?”.

The answer is complicated, but I will give it a shot.

1) AWS is known to write press releases before building a product; similarly, I believe in an obituary-first approach to planning your life. Write the obituary you want to have once you are dead, then work out how to get it. Mine included more than one chapter.

2) What we work on largely defines who we are. I seek to align my technical interests, my economic interests, and my “what is the right thing to do” interests. Security work checks the first two, but the third point became increasingly difficult for me over the years. The ...

... nature of security always involves human-to-human conflict, and you always end up picking a side. With increasing age, picking a side became harder.

3) Increasing age turned me into more of an environmentalist, and I started wondering: How can I reduce my ecological impact?

At some point I realized that a lot of the security work has direct similarities to efficiency work. You dig through other peoples legacy infra to find problems. You use various low-level tools to do so. When you do find severe security problems, nobody is happy. For perf, it...

... usually means people will save money, so they are naturally more receptive to hearing about them.

Perf work certainly checks all the boxes for my technical interests: Full-stack CS, low level work, algorithms, compilers, heaps, the full range of goodness.

Economically, ...

... I believe that efficiency will become super important again, so there is a good economic opportunity.

The very best part, though, and the thing that really convinced me to take the plunge was the “positive externality”: If we are successful, we earn money while saving ...

... the customer money, but ALSO reducing waste / saving energy. For me, this is hugely motivating: Most of modern business / capitalism is built around increasing consumption: Creating more stuff and getting people to consume more of it; overall increasing environmental impact.

Doing optimyze represented the unique opportunity to apply my existing skills to something that looks economically viable (we shall see;) while *reducing* environmental footprint. Selling people “less waste/less consumption”.

Summary: There‘s a chance to work on something that is super interesting, might be a good business AND have a positive side effect for the world. That seemed too good to not give it a try. Perhaps it will pan out :-)