On finding my ideal ratio between consulting, teaching and writing
This post was published on October 4, 2017Those of you that have been reading my blog posts for a while know that I like to reflect on my own career from time to time. Since it’s been a while since I wrote such a blog post, I thought it would be a good idea to share with you what I’m up to at the moment.
Basically, my working time is still divided into three subjects: consulting, teaching and writing. I’m continuously trying to find out what is the ideal ratio between each of these activities, something that’s partly under my own control, yet also depends on the amount of work that’s coming my own. Or that I am able to steer my way, of course.
Here’s a quick recap of my activities in each of these three fields.
Consulting
On site consulting still makes up the major part of my working week. Not sure how the situation is in the rest of the world, but here in the Netherlands there’s plenty of work available for those who know a little about test automation and have some communication skills too, so getting projects isn’t too hard at the moment. I have to say ‘no’ more often than I can say ‘yes’!
That’s a very luxurious position to be in, I definitely realize that. And yet.. It’s safe, since I am guaranteed an income for at least 25-30 hours per week (it’s all billed by the hour), but I feel it does also make me complacent at times. This might sound strange (or spoiled), but I could actually do with a little less consulting work, but that would require having more work in the other two categories. Either that, or seeing a significant (but hopefully temporary) fall in my income, a prospect which I don’t particularly look forward to.
Teaching
It’s been too long, but I finally had (or created, depending on how you look at things) another opportunity to deliver on site training, this time with my former employer. I spent two evenings with around 10 students, teaching them about the concepts behind API testing and automation and introducing them to a range of tools (more on that training course and the approach I experimented with here). This reminded me how exciting and motivating it is to deliver training, and that it definitely is something I feel I should pursue harder. Ideally, I’d do at least two or three of these courses a month, but I’m nowhere near that frequency yet.
I have started working on a related project, though. It’ll be an online course around Selenium, which will hopefully see the light of day in the coming months.
Next to that, I’m actively working on finding more ways to deliver on site training, both at clients here in the Netherlands as well as at conferences. This is a slow process, but I’ve made some good connections in the past few months and I’m positive this effort will pay off soon enough.
And while we’re on the subject of conferences: I’ve got two talks coming up this month. First, I’ll be at the fall conference of the Dutch testers association TestNet (site in Dutch), and later this month it’s time for TestBash Manchester. Really looking forward to speaking at and being a part of both of these events!
Finally, I was a panelist at a webinar hosted by the people at Testim, where we talked about creating an automation strategy fit for CI/CD and the skills required to do so. For those of you that missed it, you can find a recording here.
Writing
This one I’ve actively put on the back burner for a while. In the past few months, I’ve written quite a few articles for TechBeacon, StickyMinds and some other one-off blog posts, next to my weekly blog post on this site, of course. That spread me a little thin so I decided to stick with my weekly OnTestAutomation blogs for a while.
I am currently working on something related to writing, though: I’m the technical editor for a book on test automation that’s to be released in the first half of next year. This is something I’ve never done before, but that’s only a good thing.
The gist of this is that I could do with a little more teaching and a little less consulting and that I’m actively working on making that happen. As ever, it’s an interesting journey.
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