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A couple of years ago, I transitioned from the normal full-time employee lifestyle to that of a contractor. The engagement was a contract to hire however it didn't last as long as planned. Luckily I had another client approach me shortly afterwards and things developed from there, and have been doing it ever since.
Things have not changed much since I wrote my earlier post on leaving the full-time world behind. However, upon discovering Erik Dietrich's blog and book as well as being a party to a few events that transpired within a couple of weeks, I made a few revelations. Mainly the difference between being a freelancer doing staff augmentation, and being a consultant.
My story on how I went into freelancing started while I was fully employed, and was a way to learn a new technology stack while being able to have a larger role in a collaborative project than I would at my day job. I still recall what I was told by a mentor that it would take years to gain enough network connections and reputation to be taken seriously, and maybe in about 10 years, then I could possibly suggest feature enhancements.
It was during that conversation that I realized the difference between the glacial pace of a large corporations and the more autonomy and responsibility in my side business, and what it means to have a direct impact for the customer. That lead me to working for a small consultancy that was transitioning into a product company. It took a few years to realize through the engagements I was working on, while more customer focused, still had the same underlying concept of being given a task to do regardless of how worthwhile it would be in the end, or if it would solve the customer's underlying problem. There was no critical thinking beyond creating widgets.
Dietrich makes a point of asking how does one consider themselves? Do they advertize their skils such as Java or Wordpress, or do they advertize solutions. While I have been in this former category of advertizing what I know in the hopes of targeting a specific engagement, it has been the equivlant of stating what tools I work with, but not the work that I do.
That now changes. Going forward, I will offer up how I am different. I bridge solutions.
To put this into context, the last few years have seen me glue various stacks together to allow companies interoperate between various vendors with competing interests allowing them to reduce their final costs or help save the data that is locked away on dying hardware. I utilize various tools and technologies to perform data syncing and translating. It could be on-prem, or it could be in the cloud. It could also involve opening up one set of technology to other platforms.
I will be sharing what I've done in some cases, or have picked up along the way. I have already done a little bit of that last year with my post on WebSEAL, and some more recent work with Aktion.
Stay tuned for what else could come up in the future, or reach out to find out more.