What to do..

I should have much more time to blog now that I’m out of a job. I was ‘laid off’ on Friday. While my boss said it was a result of the merger, I’m pretty sure that there were other reasons at the core. My role had been fairly murky for a while now. In any case, now that the shock has worn off, the question is what to do now.

What I want to do is take some time to get a better understanding of what I really want to do. There are a few different directions that I could take.

- I could try to move forward on the path I’d been travelling. Look for a senior development management position in a software organization – preferable at the avp or snr director level.

- I could shift back to a technical career by pursuing ‘architect’ type roles. My resume supports this as does much of my recent experience. Although my primary role has been as a manager, at Oracle this effectively combined management, architecture, and product management. Which leads to..

- I could shift in the direction I pursued last summer and attempt to move into a product management role.

- I could just try to find cool programming jobs in areas that I’m interested in – distributed systems, high volume transaction systems, web-scale application architecture, etc. This option is very consistent with…

- I could consult/contract as an individual for a while. Gain and polish skills. I might even be able to get some work-at-home opportunities via the net..

- I could start my business – M L S Co. (My Little SOA Company). I’d target mid market and up companies needing strategic SOA consulting, guidance, and implementation assistance. I’d do as much as possible and recruit help from the contractor work pool until i got enough cash flow to hire perms.

- I could go back to school. This one is a little tenuous now that I’m spending what is effectively the tuition on home renovation… (if only I’d been laid off a couple of weeks earlier before the demo). On this front the options are MBA vs. PhD where MBA is the ‘make money’ option and PhD is the ‘enjoy life’ option. Both take a couple of years. Both provide new opportunites on the back end…

Lotsa choices. More later – I have to order some plumbing supplies before it’s too late…

~ by kindablue on June 11, 2008.