After four years of being my full-time gig, Metafizzy is reverting back to a side-business. This week I start a new full-time job at Compass.

For my personal career and well-being, the new job is a huge win. I'll be working on a bigger endeavor, with world-class colleagues, producing a reliable income with great benefits. I'm excited for this next chapter.

For Metafizzy, it's a bittersweet coda. Over the past two years, revenue had plateaued. Being a father and mortgage-owner, the risk of staying independent was too high. I welcome the stability of joining a thriving company and being adequately compensated for my effort.

My four years full-time on Metafizzy is the longest tenure with a single employer of my entire career. I feel lucky to have gotten this far, but also a bit heart-broken that it's over. I think of all the things I never got to do: hiring teammates, championing a business model, shipping more products. There is much left undone.

But there's also so much left that still works. Metafizzy, its plugins, and its brand remains completely in my possession. Metafizzy never took outside funding. I have no lingering debt that requires a hard exit. Everything continues to live on.

In practical terms, that means plugins will continue to be supported. The plugins' code bases have long been stable for years. (Isotope, for example, hasn't required a minor version update since 2015.) I do have plans for the next major version updates, dropping IE11 and fully adopting ES6, but that's still further down the road.

Outside of the plugins, everything else can be considered on hiatus. That covers freelance logo design and front-end development, Logo Pizza, and Fizzy School. I may dip back into these projects, but don't hold your breath.

I still feel there is so much money to be made in independent front-end development. Even though our practice has largely been free to learn and free to use, the value that front-end developers drive is enormous. The Metafizzy model was on to something and that something is still out there.