Two Halves of a Career
I’ve been trying to think of different ways to see my career. Often times I can see the shape of something and have to have a lot of attempts and conversations before I can find the right words for the thing I see.
I’d been playing with the words to describe the first half of my career (consulting, onsite, client work, thinking a lot about new ideas, software in the large, culture, the craft itself) and the second half (more permie roles, fixed team, focussed on the needs and context of this particular place and these particular people).
I’d been using “outwards facing” and “inward facing”, but there’s also a sense of “project focused” vs “product focused” and it also made me remember the endless discussions at XP conferences with ObjectMentor folks and Thoughtworkers where we all bounced between wanting to teach/consult/enable, and wanting to just find a team of good people and build something.
I found great people at LivingSocial and Sketch and Flexibits and Mindme who just wanted to build something, but I sort of cut myself off from the outward facing, industry-at-large thinking.
I still don’t have the right words. Maybe you have some ideas for the shapes I see. The two phases (eras?) are not positive and negative, they’re just different, and I’ll keep working to find the right words.
To quote Ron Jeffries, “how will I know what I think until I hear what I say?”