I try to keep to a schedule of a post every three days, and I’ve definitely not been keeping on top of that – I haven’t posted for almost a week and a half now. I apologize for the lack of content; in my defense, I’ve been deep in negotiations that have resulted in some exciting personal changes. Changes that should hopefully make this modest blog even more interesting!

Leaving Hipstamatic

I’m leaving my position as web director of Synthetic. I love the company and the product – I think Hipstamatic has a bright future ahead of it, and it is, in my opinion, easily the best photography app on the market. But my professional growth there had stalled. I was having lots of fun juggling servers, code, customer service, database administration, and, well, everything else technical. Yet I was hungry for more: specifically, opportunities to execute and pursue my own technical vision as a valued partner, not just a valued employee. I wanted to be a decision maker.

Synthetic has always been a company driven by design. You can see it in any of their amazing sites (featuring stellar HTML, CSS, and JS by the incomparable @LukesBeard), and even the design of the Hipstamatic itself, which is retro and cool and usable all at once. But for an ambitious technical guy, direction through design didn’t leave a lot of opportunity for personal growth. I knew if I wanted to let my voice be heard, I’d have to go somewhere else to do it.

Joining GirlsGuideTo

So what’s next for Josh Symonds?

I accepted an offer from GirlsGuideTo, an insanely fabulous website for women, to be their CTO and co-founder. Having recently secured a round of seed financing, GirlsGuideTo is positioned really excellently. They have a huge userbase and are poised to really take over their market; their only stumbling block is some really old software and a somewhat dated design. Those are problems I can fix! Within the next month, I intend to give the site a complete graphical and technical overhaul. Under my technical direction (and CEO Brette Borow’s product management), GirlsGuideTo will grow to be an even more amazing site – the premiere destination for women to get advice, read awesome articles, and connect with one another.

Within the next couple weeks, I also intend to release my first RubyMotion application to the iTunes App Store. Featuring some excellent designs by the aforementioned @LukesBeard and some pretty nifty code by yours truly, it represents the culmination of nearly a month spent working during almost all my free time. I think it’s pretty cool, and I’ll be spending some time discussing its technical infrastructure and how I used RubyMotion to make it happen.

Finally, what does all this mean for my blog? Well, I’ll still post awesome code and go on and on about how much I love Ruby. But I’ll also be talking about the trials and tribulations of a newly-minted CTO at a new startup; finding talent, putting it to use, and in general conquering the world one step at a time. And I promise to get back on my regular, three-day schedule while I do it.

So stick around and keep reading; this blog will only get more interesting!