Leaving Last.fm

I’ve spent 3.43 years at Last.fm, which seems almost like a lifetime. For a long time, I couldn’t ever imagine leaving; every morning I would wake up excited to go and face new challenges and do fascinating new things. In the last 6-12 months so much has changed, as Last.fm gradually slips out of being a startup to being a company that, for better or for worse, has to make some money. I will certainly think twice before working for a company that has anything to do with the music industry… it’s a pain of a situation.

I’ve babysat the wonderful creation that is Last.fm through launches (both expected and unexpected), crashes (always unexpected), overheatings (and break-ins, and power failures… All the kind of thing that should never happen to a datacentre) and plenty of blood, sweat and tears.

It’s been an amazing experience, working with some of the most amazing people I have ever met (some of which have come and gone), but it’s time for me to help another startup through getting up at 4am to fix databases and exciting scaling questions.

And that will be Etsy; another website that has an awesome product that I love, plenty of traffic and graphs that point upwards and a bunch of guys who are passionate and have an awesome method of working. I’m really excited about getting involved and learning things again, as well as enabling a different group of passionate users go about their day to day business. I’ll still be in London, but popping to NY on occasion.

Let’s hope the next 3.43 years will be just as exciting.

7 thoughts on “Leaving Last.fm”

  1. Last.fm are definitely going to miss you, and couldn’t have done it without you!
    Have fun at Etsy, sounds like an exciting new challenge πŸ™‚

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