I need to be in a team of excited, fast-moving people stressing the fuck out (in a fun way) on challenging and important problems.

You could always join the Abuse Prevention Team!

"in a fun way"

What was the name of the mock company we used for that AP Economics project???

Maybe you can use our business plan, start that up and we can get back the point we lost for playing the porn music :)

Sounds like you miss the project management type roles in particular -- even if it's not the formalized "let's write a spec" etc. Taking a huge project, breaking it down, splitting it up amongst several people, making sure things get done, doing a giant chunk of it yourself, that kind of thing.

Though I think part of the problem is just that we have so few people to work on any one "project" -- it's hard to build a team when everyone's so specialized/overworked/whatever. So, um, we're hiring? *g*

Sounds like your long-term happiness would be maximized by either starting a new thing on your own (then maybe bringing others into it), or finding another project to do.

You can always jump on the growing CDN bandwagon.

who do you work for?

I am soooo glad I did not buy the Permanent Account. :D
(I think you ran the show pretty well.)

Its right under your nose: Start a company that develops and supports your open source projects in some way. Make your tools easier, add the long-requested features, support companies with guaranteed response times, etc. Or some variation that lets you work full-time on these things.

Your "weekend" hacking has produced some of the most amazing open source tools. Take it even further.

We just went through the share holders agreement at my new gig this morning with a signing session to follow soon. Private companies certainly suck in that respect; our agreement was basically, "Give us money to buy shares you won't control for up to 3 years and can't transfer and may have to return to the company if you leave." As far as agreements for startups go it actually isn't that bad, but it's no AAPL or GOOG.

Let's do a startup! heh

Does the new exciting stuff concern Six Apart in any way?

You're asking about non-competes, I'd guess. Yes, I have a non-compete thing in my contract but,

a) they're basically non-enforceable in California anyway,

b) people are already starting to do what I want to do anyway... I just think I could do it pretty well, and pretty quickly,

c) SixApart would benefit from me doing it, and their relationship with me, as their products would work well with it, so it'd be in their best interest to let me do it, and support it, even if I'm doing it outside of SixApart.

d) it'd be beneficial for SixApart to maintain a positive relationship with me anyway, for other reasons, but they don't seem the sue-happy type anyway.

etc, etc, etc.

Another option, not specifically mentioned: pitch an idea for the company (which will probably be a little bit over the edge) and offer to hire it out to some mercenaries, CIA style. Most of your ideas seem to follow the fast and low-frills path and seem to enjoy a relatively high level of success. Might be fun. Soon you'll be back to sitting on a couch in shorts/drawers with a few other nuts hacking code and ideas. Or possibly taking over a small country in the tropics manufacturing hookers and pimpin' blow.

Come work with me.

:)

I just read a wonderfully great rant (friends only) about why one would not want to work for Tivo. :)

Grab Mr. Bunner, he gets pretty psyched about working on challenging and important problems!

You could continue to maintain and enhance the projects developed and released under the Danga banner. You could offer integration services as well as bounty style feature requests. Advances in these projects benefit 6A while providing a hacking ground that you enjoy (at least that's the impression I get). This may not be financially viable though.

You could try getting into some of the already established sites:
If you're into the high seas of the Internet realm you could help out all those torrent trackers who crumble under their daily load.

They guys over at Digg could sure use a hand with their comment system which gets slower and less intuitive every time they fix it.

Hard to start something without the boring business aspect... Need someone to manage money. Manage legal. Manage HR. Deal with people. Deal with customers.

The #2 on my list right now is private contract work, but that'd just drive me insane anyway? Jeremy/Eric/Peter/etc seem to do well :P A contracting LLC doesn't seem to have many of those business-y downsides.

Blah, rambling. At Gaia I used to be in a team of motivated people building shit on a four-eight day cycle. Been working alone for a while now. Been thinking some of the same shit perhaps.

You could always go more part-time at SA and just start your thing now, and then move to it more fully when it gets more rolling.

-Max

underagebitches.com!

that was the best site ever! I think skanywhores.com would be a great one to develop as well.

Same thing all bored inventive millionaire playboys do:
Costumed crime-fighting super-secret double-identity.
Also, chicks dig the tight shirts. Or so I've heard.

Who says it's just the chicks? ;P

Do you have one of those contracts that stipulates that SixApart owns any projects you begin to develop on your own time?

Uh, Google?

That's an obvious candidate, yes. I certainly know enough people there, and they do a lot of stuff I really respect.

huh- so in that, it also means that they haven't granted you any additional vesting-style equity since then?
that's kinda jacked, imo :)

If you have the cash, I can't imagine why you wouldn't put together your own team and go it alone - how could that possibly not be the most fun option?

I'm increasingly being impressed with all the Danga projects and where they could be with a little cleanup, a lot of documentation and some funky hacks. Wanna scale stuff up?

I'm sorry I'm helpless here, but I'd like to give you my best wishes. :)

Whatever it is, I'm sure it'll be totally awesome.

Aww, thanks.