Hello everyone! You may have noticed things have been quiet here for the last few months, so I wanted to explain what has been going on, where I am now, and what the future looks like.
Up until recently I was in an IT Director position. This is of course a much less hands-on technical role which was resulting in less of my general ‘this is a technical problem that I couldn’t find a solution to online, so I worked it out myself and here’s what I did’ blog posts which I enjoy writing and sharing.
I also stopped writing my weekly roundups of TechCommunity. Although they were useful for me to write, in that I’d learn what was going on and had a few people comment the round-up was useful – they’re really only good content for a short period of time for a reasonable amount of effort, and my blog is more of a library of interesting information rather than ‘news’.
Even my Twitter was suffering (or benefiting if you don’t like my tweets) – the random observations/questions/discussions that I use the platform to throw things at as part of processing thoughts or getting the hive-mind’s opinions back on was not being used.
Another point around the above is where I was mentally. I was becoming checked-out generally and didn’t like where my mind was, which was an ‘indifferent to too much’ state and was finding it harder to buy into what I needed to do to do my role best. I was missing passion for my work and had changed from waking up and looking forward to what I’d get up to. There are many factors that affects something like this which I won’t get into the details of; but I knew I needed to change something. The whole ‘great resignation/reshuffle‘ generally aligned with my situation – for example I wanted to be at home with my family and kids more, and have more flexibility in when I could work or not work, and come into the office or work from home… harder to do as an IT Director, as I hold a high expectation on what I do and deliver.
An opportunity came up after applying to work for Microsoft as a Customer Success Account Manager. The role aligned with a lot of what I enjoyed – being across Microsoft technologies, talking to others about how they can keep up with and move along the technology track and use the products they’re already paying for, as well as a high degree of autonomy. There’s even an aspect of keeping customers up to date with what’s new and coming from Microsoft – somewhat aligns with my TechCommunity posts above, doesn’t it?
So, that’s what I’ve spent the last 2 months doing. Wrapping up the old role, and starting a rather different, but in some ways still similar, role at the company I’d aligned a lot of my working career with. I wanted to focus on the offboarding and onboarding without other distractions, and get through that big change.
You may have also noticed that I’d had to rebrand this website a bit. Along with onboarding, I had to hand in my Microsoft MVP badge – so that’s all gone now. The good news is that this blog didn’t exist to service that title, it was a nice reward but not really a driving factor. I still like to write to help my brain process what I’ve learnt or sharpen my understanding of a topic as I research while writing to make sure I’m getting it right.
At the time of writing, I’m week 2 into the new Microsoft role – a lot more to learn, but having a different challenge and being thrown way out of my comfort zone was something I needed to help get re-engaged in my work. What I’m hoping is that this will also lead to some new blog posts – probably (definitely) less PowerShell commands, and potentially some more higher level considerations or gotchas that align with what I need to learn as a part of my new role.
Looking forward to seeing what life in Microsoft is like and how my life will change around having a more flexible role!