June 4th, 2022: Greetings from Austin. Was nice to be back at home base after a short trip to Boston and Connecticut. We have about two more weeks here before we are heading out on a trip driving from San Fran to Portland and then up to Seattle for a few days. After that, we’ll be in Connecticut for the rest of the summer.
Jun 6, 2022·edited Jun 6, 2022Liked by Paul Millerd
I'm in year 17 and these past 5 years of "mode discovery" represent the most stable I felt (between 2013 and 2017 I changed jobs 5 times). The most honest answer I have to the question "What do you do" is "I'm still figuring it out (and I like it)".
It's counterintuitive for most (we tend to associate stability with working between the bounds of a company, an office, a role, a career path and so on), but —apart from a 3-year-run- I never worked at a company for more than a year before becoming an independent consultant.
I always had doubts about narrowing myself down to a mission statement and a selected target: as much as advice and strategies like the ones from Jonathan Stark (https://jonathanstark.com/) made sense to me, I never felt like it applied to me.
I think that type of narrowing down can work for people who basically go from one corporate job to the freelance version of it: that's wasn't my experience thougt, as I went for a completely different path.
I'm definitely using a part of my consulting the way Critchlow describe it, as a way to fuel some future and experimental work, pinning myself down to the work I do today would be a strategic mistake although it's tempting to be instantly recognized as the "[Something] Guy" (as we people in consulting very well know, what is trendy today —in my case, "Agile"— won't be trendy tomorrow, you gotta stay light on your feet).
Happy travels to you and your family as you experience different cities and return to Connecticut. I love the story of Ben because it sparks big questions and a focus for an article. Indeed, it is a creative way to break from work and feed curiosity. The educational system still has the advantage for the validation of deliverables in light of standards of practice. While it's true we know "your results may vary" when it comes to graduate degrees, the credentialing registries are still set up for the benefit of the job seeker and the employer. That's starting to shift, but it may take another 100 years to completely alter the relationships and dependencies built up for the past 100 years between educational institutions and human resource professionals in charge of searches and in charge of hiring, benefits and raises.
I'm in year 17 and these past 5 years of "mode discovery" represent the most stable I felt (between 2013 and 2017 I changed jobs 5 times). The most honest answer I have to the question "What do you do" is "I'm still figuring it out (and I like it)".
It's counterintuitive for most (we tend to associate stability with working between the bounds of a company, an office, a role, a career path and so on), but —apart from a 3-year-run- I never worked at a company for more than a year before becoming an independent consultant.
I always had doubts about narrowing myself down to a mission statement and a selected target: as much as advice and strategies like the ones from Jonathan Stark (https://jonathanstark.com/) made sense to me, I never felt like it applied to me.
I think that type of narrowing down can work for people who basically go from one corporate job to the freelance version of it: that's wasn't my experience thougt, as I went for a completely different path.
I'm definitely using a part of my consulting the way Critchlow describe it, as a way to fuel some future and experimental work, pinning myself down to the work I do today would be a strategic mistake although it's tempting to be instantly recognized as the "[Something] Guy" (as we people in consulting very well know, what is trendy today —in my case, "Agile"— won't be trendy tomorrow, you gotta stay light on your feet).
Happy travels to you and your family as you experience different cities and return to Connecticut. I love the story of Ben because it sparks big questions and a focus for an article. Indeed, it is a creative way to break from work and feed curiosity. The educational system still has the advantage for the validation of deliverables in light of standards of practice. While it's true we know "your results may vary" when it comes to graduate degrees, the credentialing registries are still set up for the benefit of the job seeker and the employer. That's starting to shift, but it may take another 100 years to completely alter the relationships and dependencies built up for the past 100 years between educational institutions and human resource professionals in charge of searches and in charge of hiring, benefits and raises.