Dan Hough

I'm joining Marvel

Published 19 May 2016 in London, UK (~5min read)

Let’s talk about Marvel. No, not the comic book company. Marvel is an application that’s used by designers, product managers, entrepreneurs, developers and all sorts of people to create engaging interactive prototypes for their app and website designs. Last year, I worked with them for about six months on a big refactoring project. It was a great job, I made some friends and gained some very valuable experiences from it.

However, it was a contract role, just like the last few that I’ve had. It’s now been over two-and-a-half years since I left my last permanent role. In that time, I’ve learned a great deal about software development, about how to run a small business, and most importantly, about which things I care most about personally. I’ve learned more about myself.

This chapter of my career is now coming to a close as I will be starting a permanent job at Marvel in June. To some, going permanent may seem crazy; contract roles tend to command higher pay and more flexible hours. But as a contractor, it can be difficult to branch out of your existing job and find completely different challenges to expand your skillset. This was my main reason for deciding a couple of months ago to leave contracting behind for the time being. I decided to look for a company which could accommodate my career goals, offer interesting and compelling work; a team of people from whom I could learn a lot and really enjoy working with long-term.

Once I’d come to this decision it was quite natural for me to get in touch with Brendan and Murat at Marvel, and I was delighted to discover they still had a place for me and that there’s plenty for me to contribute. I interviewed in a couple of other places too–always good to look at other options–but the cultural fit wasn’t as good as at Marvel.

So at the end of this month after a week-long holiday in Russia, I’ll be joining the Marvel team once again. I’m so thankful for their job offer and I am very excited indeed about working there again 😁

Heckle me on Twitter @basicallydan.