Life after Internet time is good. I was fortunate enough to be helped by a friend with a good contracting position where I could continue to learn and earn while getting away from a technical debt laden architecture that was draining all my energy just to keep the lights on. I'm sure it is better now but I think it was a good thing, win-win, for both sides for me to go when I did. From what I'm hearing, my departure along with those of some others spurred some growth in hiring. I like to think at least that they needed to hire 3 or 4 or 5 people to replace me :).

I'm selling my stock options soon because of a deadline. Not so much that I don't believe in the company. I put 4 years of my best efforts into it's growth to a $475 million dollar firm. I need the money and can't keep the stock. I want to focus my money and my energy (and money for me is a piece of my stored energy) into better ideas about how an organization can run. On my About Anthony page, I put together a diagram in Visio about the structure of an Agile DSS organization. I love Visio. I bought it on the Internet at a discount and it is really helping me capture and express my ideas.

Anyway, my birthday is coming up next month and all indications will be that one way or another, I will be teaming up with one or more of my ex-colleagues and friends for a new adventure. I think it is the trend of the future for talented individuals/friends to break off from careers with large companies to make corrections to necessary, but not sufficient business practices by launching their own companies. Triple convergence as Thomas Friedman says is upon us.