Career Update and a New Chapter
A couple of months back, I announced on LinkedIn that some opportunities fell through and I found myself unexpectedly on the market looking for work. It has been a while since I've given an update on what was going on and what I've been up to.
The Search Begins (Anew!)
After watching both opportunities fall through, I began my job search again, leading to me applying to over fifty different companies, focusing on leadership roles (think Team Lead, Engineering Manager, or Director of Engineering). Even though I have quite a few years of recent experience (I've been leading teams in some capacity since 2018), the most common piece of feedback is that it seemed like my recent roles were more technical than leadership.
That's fair feedback as my leadership style is that I wouldn't ask a member of my team to do something that I wouldn't do and I'm naturally curious about how things work, so there are times when I've rolled up my sleeves to help the team get projects done and/or be the technical lead that the team needed.
So, let's try a different approach.
I retooled my resume to highlight my technical accomplishments and applied for more experienced technical roles (think Senior Software Engineer, Staff Software Engineer, Principal Engineer, and Architect). Given the first round of feedback, I figured this would be a shoe-in, right?
Not quite...
Most of the feedback I got for these roles is that I wasn't hands-on technical enough (though my most recent engagements had me coding the vast majority of the time), though my leadership skills were solid.
What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?
Not going to lie, it's a bit frustrating to be told that you're too technical for leadership, but not technical enough for engineering, especially when you've helped companies launch new products and new offerings.
My theory (potential cope) is that companies don't know what to do when they find someone who's both a strong technical leader and a strong engineer as they don't come across them that often. Most of the companies I've seen typically want their leadership to be able to understand concepts (i.e., what is continuous deployment pipeline), but not enough to implement or fix it when there are issues. For the engineering side, my experience was that they wanted people who were deep in the technical weeds (we're talking edge cases, knowing the docs cold), but didn't ask a ton about how the work fits into the bigger picture of the business.
For me, I need a combination of both to be happy. I enjoy doing the technical work, building new tools/products to solve problems as I'm great at finding issues with a process and making it smoother.
On the other hand, I thoroughly enjoy leading people and coaching up a team. That was one of the original inspirations for this blog, The Software Mentor, a way to give back and be an (unofficial) mentor to those who don't have someone to level up from.
I can't just ignore one side of the equation, that's throwing away half my strengths.
So what do you do?
In my case, change the game.
A Different Approach
Over my career, I've been lucky to work at quite a few companies and have built great relationships everywhere I went. In addition, I've spent the last ten years building up a reputation in the community as a technical leader (Microsoft MVP since 2017 and have been presenting on technical concepts since 2015).
I figured if I can't get work as an engineer or as a leader, why not try something new.
Back in 2014, some friends and I had started on an ill-fated attempt to build a replacement Point of Sale system to be used by liquor stores (this would have been before tools like Square would become ubiquitous). Though the project never launched, we gave it a name, Small Batch Software as it was both a tip of the cap to small batch distilling and a nod to working in small batches (a la Lean Manufacturing with batch sizes of 1).
We always joked that Small Batch might take off at some point, but we retired the project and the idea of Small Batch was retired (like most ideas go).
Fast forward to 2021, I started taking on some side work, helping other companies with their implementation and process improvement. At the time, I didn't have a formal company, but I started thinking more about forming a company and working through that.
When I left Rocket Mortgage in 2023, I decided to form my own company, Small Batch Solutions LLC to help me with a more formal approach for moonlighting, partly to get some experience and partly to see how it would go.
However, like most things, it was a good idea, but I didn't put the required energy into the company, so it has been mostly dormant since then.
Which brings us to the present.
Small Batch Solutions - Iteration One
After pouring more energy into the company over the past two months, I've had success in landing clients, focusing on what I enjoy doing the most:
- Mentoring others, helping them advance in their career and technical skills
- Problem solving, figuring out pain points and solving them simply
Given these successes, I've chosen to focus on Small Batch Solutions full-time, allowing me to continue building with the community and also allowing me to use my strengths without having to fit in a single "box".
If you've ever found yourself thinking, "I wish I could work with someone who just gets it and can help me", then reach out, I think I might be able to help!