The more things change, the more they stay the same

Several months back I posted about a change happening in my life.  I was changing jobs from a great local consulting company to a service company focusing on Windows Azure.  Prior to the change I had been working at the same client for over six years, a financial services company in Mason, OH. 

Have you ever really wanted something, only to get it and realize it wasn’t what you needed?  In my career that’s happened twice now.  Straight out of college I was in law enforcement (yeah, not computer science… my degree is actually in Police Administration).  I was a police officer for a city in Northern Kentucky for a very short time.  Long enough to go through the academy and get about a third of the way through my field training.  One day it just hit me that this career path wasn’t good for me.  Several weeks went by and nothing got better, so I resigned.  I left not knowing what I would do instead, until I got a job that was somewhat computer related for state University.

Back in June I went to work for a Cloud Computing services company focusing on Windows Azure, which is what I’d been playing with in my own time anyway.  I loved teaching Windows Azure technology to folks through the Windows Azure Boot Camps.  The job I was going to would let me focus completely on only Windows Azure projects.  Part of my role was going to be evangelizing the platform, which meant going to conferences to give presentations (which I also love doing).  It was everything I was looking for at the time, exactly what I wanted.  Sadly, it wasn’t what I needed.

So, for the second time in my career I found that I was doing something that wasn’t good for me for a variety of reasons.  The job was exactly as described for the most part and the projects were pretty interesting.  It just wasn’t what I needed to be doing.  This last Wednesday was my last day.

What am I going to do now?  Well, as the title of this post implies, the more things change the more they stay the same.  No, I’m not going to back to the consulting company (though I would if I wanted to get back to consulting).  I have instead signed on to the financial services company that was my client for many years.  I’ve been very happy to see them grow over that time and have been impressed with how passionately they’ve adopted agile methodologies.  They have complete buy in for agile from the top down.  The business is loving it and the developers are reaping the benefits of a great working environment.  I’m looking forward to getting started on Monday.

Will I be working on Windows Azure?  Likely, not in my day job.  There might be some good fits for the cloud for the company, but I’m not aware of any major projects on the platform yet.  But, prior to going to work for the cloud computing services company I was mostly investing my own time and effort into Windows Azure anyway.  I have a few side projects in mind that will keep me up to date with Windows Azure beyond helping keep the Windows Azure Boot Camp program running.

So, time for yet another chapter in my career.  As many people have said, “change is coming”.  Strangely enough, change is the one constant in our field.  I’m glad to have had the opportunity to work with some great people over the last few months.  I’m glad I realized what was important to my life and I’m glad to have found the courage to chase it.