Re-inventing yourself! Part 1: Work

Maybe it is time for an overhaul of myself for once. I am closing to touching 46. That's only a matter of days. And with this age, you do ask yourself more and more the questions: What do you want to do with the rest of your life.

I have to admit that the answers on this question don't come easy. Your brains go from left to right, up and down. So, probably it is better to divide this into smaller questions. Like Work, health, family, friends, hobbies and so on.

For today I will focus on Work!

Career

After graduating I did start with one of the bigger IT firm. Not in my own country but in the Netherlands, which is only 20 minutes away. Due to the fact that I didn't see myself as a consultant, I did start with in-house development.

Back in the days, mid 99, there wasn't internet on a mobile phone as we know it now. Still we working on this. Back in those days it was possible to ask questions about a specific today via SMS, and you would get an answer back. Think about weather or stocks.

But there was also WAP. Wireless Access Protocol, which was the real start of mobile internet. Our text server and WAP server were selling as sweet candies. But after several take-overs, the company did sell their in-house development department and I did had the choice to move over to the consultant part of the company.
After some hesitation, I decided to try that out. My first assignment was at a big pension funds. The start date was the first of April 2007. It turned out to be a long April's fool. Because I am still working for that customer. Always as an analyst. I guess I did work in all teams working on the pension system and still am.

Meanwhile I did get promoted to senior consultant at my main employer. Which is starting to become a burden at the moment.
I do find it tougher and tougher to satisfy to bosses, not even mentioning the one at home. So changes are necessary.

I had a discussion with the customer to move over to them. While I don't have anything against them, it seems that the negotiations did dry up. Not a real idea why. I do know that they are searching for lots of new people; but it is more or less against the agreement to take over consultants from our firm. I did hear yesterday from another colleague that he is also discussion this possibility with them, so probably they first want to see if that deal will go through; giving me the idea that I am second hey maybe even third or fourth) in line. Which maybe isn't the case but that is my impression now.

To keep all options open, I will have to list up for myself the work which does give me energy and what I do like to do. Also I need to do some investigations to see what field of expertise I do need to improve. As long as I am with my current employer, I can better use the educational budget they have for each consultant.

In the mean time, I will update my status on Linkdin and write a new resume. This does sound a lot easier then it looks. I still do think that I do have a chance at the age of 47 to move to a new company, but not consultancy work anymore. I want to build out a new career at a company.

Also I will spend each day the rest of the month doing some homework for myself, creating lists and do some online courses.

Cheers,
Peter