I’ve now worked at Isometric for three years. It’s the first proper company I’ve worked for, and in that time it’s grown from fewer than ten people with no product or customers to team of over seventy five working with more than a hundred project developers and some of the world’s largest companies as clients.
The title of this essay comes from a line I read a while ago: “Things won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing1” I’ve found it a useful reminder when work gets hectic, but also as a touchstone for the kind of work I want to be part of, work where the meaning comes from what you spend your days doing. I feel like this type of meaning shows up particularly clearly in startups where progress takes willful action to achieve and where what you do day to day has a direct, visible impact on the company’s trajectory and on your own. This kind of meaning is something I’ve been able to find easily at Isometric and I wanted to capture a few thoughts on why.
Originally I joined because of the mission. I wanted to work somewhere that could help shape the carbon removal market. Three years later there’s still a lot to do, but I genuinely believe there are now clear examples where, without Isometric, parts of the sector would be less credible or much further behind. That may sound self-important, but it feels true, and well over a billion dollars of offtakes now trust Isometric’s ability to do our job well.
What makes it even more meaningful are the people and the sense of progress. There are people across every team I look to as mentors, and many I just find quietly remarkable. And there’s a feeling that both I and the company are on a slope that’s getting steeper, where we’re moving faster, learning more, and getting better.
Of course, not every part of the job feels idealistic in the moment. But even on the days that are more about persistence than idealism, and even with long hours, I still enjoy the work enough that I sometimes bounce out of bed at night with an idea that’s just come to mind or to see if an email has come through.
When I finished my master’s, about a year before joining Isometric, I remember walking one afternoon with the feeling that I’d missed the boat, that I might end up as someone who had once shown potential but never really tested it. That sounds laughably over-dramatic now, but it felt real then. Isometric gave me the chance to see what would happen if I fully committed to something. I remember worrying how I’d handle the intensity; now I can’t imagine not having it.
There are trade-offs in working and thinking this way. The same mindset that makes the work energising can also make it consuming and I’ve built a lot of my identity around the work I do. The first part of the quote — “things won are done” — feels just as true to me as the part about finding joy in the work. Personally I find wins tend to feel collective and fade quickly, while misses linger and sit heavier. Some of that is practical: wins still need maintenance, but they settle into the background, while misses keep pulling focus as there’s always more you could do to turn them around. The result can be a mix of continual mild dissatisfaction, even while I find the wider work deeply meaningful and enjoyable.
This mindset also makes traditional work–life balance difficult. But I’ve never really wanted a clear separation between the two. I like when interesting work ideas follow me home, when the people around me are thinking about similar problems, or when a weekend turns into time spent writing about something Isometric or carbon removal related. I still want time for my family and friends, but for the most part I don’t want a role where there’s a sharp line between work and life.
At this stage of my life, these trade-offs either feel baked into who I am or things I’m happy to accept. What keeps the work rewarding is the sense that how I spend my time matters: that there are ideas worth shaping, people to learn from and support, and problems that can be moved forward through effort. What I value most is the chance to be part of something meaningful and unfinished, where progress is visible and the doing itself still feels genuinely fun. I’m grateful to have found that at Isometric.
P.S we’re hiring
- If you’ve read Troilus and Cressida you’ll know that I’m taking the quote incredibly out of context and giving it a much more grandiose meaning than it had in the play but I’m sure William wouldn’t mind. ↩︎
Neil Hacker 