As many of you know, my run at Wellington ended at the end of February. My contract wasn’t renewed for reasons beyond my control and that was that.

No more suits, sadly.*

One of the big problems with that contract ending was that the timing of it was a little abrupt. I found out just a couple of hours before I got on stage to speak at jQuery conference which was, in turn, just over two weeks away from what would turn out to be my end date. Since the time frame was compressed and I wasn’t really in the “new job” mindset to begin with, I ended up going into the first month of my job search with the wrong attitude. That wrong attitude was that it was okay to talk to people because, at the end of the day, I wasn’t working anyway, so why not hear people out?

It turns out that talking to as many people as I talked to in March is actually a pretty crummy idea. While I had good conversations with a few companies and actually got pretty close on a couple of roles that made some sense for me at this stage of my career I ended up burning myself out on the interview process before the month was over.**

In hindsight, I should have chosen my conversations more wisely, written a bunch and done a ton more open source work. Oops.

Anyway, in the back of my mind, as I was doing all of this interviewing and listening to everyone who wanted a moment of my time I was nurturing the thought that I would be happier just doing my own thing as an independent consultant for a while. I’ve always threatened to start my own agency and while this isn’t the way I imagined doing it, it is a way to do it, so the option was one that I’d thought about for a long time. It might not be my own version of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce (even if I’ve been know to dress like a modern Don Draper), but it’s still an opportunity to help clients with tough problems and do so under my own banner. That’s pretty cool by itself and if it turns into something bigger down the road, then even better. And if it doesn’t work out? That’s cool too. At least I gave it a shot.

So, to make a long story short, unless someone blows me away with a great role I’m going to be a sword-for-hire for the foreseeable future. Sure, I will listen to people that have really great engineering leadership roles, but I’m going to focus more on doing consulting and training on my own. To start, as I’ve already got an engagement that will keep me busy for the next few weeks, I’ve got a small page outlining the services I provide. I’ll be creating a more official presence as time allows, but for now that page is good enough to give you a sense of what I’m available to do.

So, hire me if you’ve got the need.

* Stated without irony. I like the suits.

** I actually had some help on that, but more on that in a subsequent post. I’ve got a couple of anecdotes to share about the interview process as I’ve witnessed it, but that will come in the next couple of weeks.