Utterly unemployable, or another update on crafting my career

This post was published on April 12, 2017

I can’t believe we’re almost halfway through April already.. With 2017 well on its way, I thought it would be a good time for another post on the way I’m trying to craft my career and build my ideal ‘job’ (that’s intentionally put between quotes). As you might have read in previous posts I wrote on this topic, I’m working hard to move away from the 40 hour per week, 9 to 5 model that’s all too prevalent in the IT consultancy world.

I’m writing this post because I see another trend in the projects I’m taking on. Whereas earlier I would join an organization temporarily as part of an Agile team and take on all kinds of tasks related to testing and test automation, I’m more and more working on shorter term projects now, where clients ask me to build an initial version of a test automation solution for them and educate them in extending and maintaining it.

Not coincidentally, this is exactly the type of project for someone who gets bored as quickly as I do. A typical project nowadays spans between two weeks and two to three months and looks somewhat like this:

Client indicates that help is needed in setting up or improving their test automation solution.
I discuss with and interview client stakeholders to get the questions behind the question answered (what is it that you want to test in an automated manner? Does that make sense? What’s the reason previous attempts didn’t work?). This is probably the most important stage of the project! Failing to ask the right questions, or not getting the answers you need increases the risk of a suboptimal (or useless) ‘solution’ afterwards.
I start building the solution, asking for feedback and demoing a couple of times per week, with the frequenct depending on the number of days I have for the project and the number of days per week I can spend on the project.
I organize a workshop where the engineers that will be working with the solution after I have left the building spend some time writing new tests and maintaining existing ones. This gives me feedback on whether what I’ve built for them works. It also gives the client feedback on whether the solution is right for them.
After gathering feedback, I’ll either wrap up and move on or do a little more work improving the solution where needed. This rework should be minimal due to the early feedback I get from interviews and discussions with stakeholders.

After my time with the client ends, I’ll make an effort to regularly follow up and see whether the solution is still to their liking, or if there are any problems with it. This is also an opportunity to hear about cool improvements that engineers made (and that I can steal for future projects)!

Next to this consulting work, I’m spending an increasing amount of time writing blog posts and articles for tech websites (and the occasional magazine). You might have seen the list of articles that have been published on the articles page. As you can see, it’s steadily growing, and at the moment, I’ve got at least four more articles lined up for the year, a number that’ll surely increase as 2017 proceeds.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that my work is slowly but steadily getting more and more international. This doesn’t mean I’m travelling the world consulting and speaking (at least not yet), but recently, I’ve been discussing options for collaboration with people and organizations abroad. These opportunities vary from writing, to taking part in webinars all the way to (remote) consulting projects. Not all of them have come through, and with a new home and two small children I’m not exactly in the position to travel that much right now, but I’m nurturing these relationships nonetheless, since you never know where they will lead you..

Currently I’m doing a trip in May for the Romanian Testing Conference, where I’ll host a REST Assured workshop and will attend the conference itself, and I’m looking at another trip somewhere in the fall. Not sure where I’ll be bound, but there are some opportunities that can definitely lead to something. And I’m always keeping my eyes and ears open for opportunities I just can’t say ‘no’ to..

I’m starting to love the ‘job’ (there are the quotes again) I’m slowly crafting this way. It gives me the opportunity to say ‘yes’ to the things I want to do, and to say ‘no’ if something isn’t interesting enough or if I don’t have the time. Although I’m still struggling with that last bit, there’s just too much cool stuff to do! I’m not sure how my career and my working days will look like in five years, so don’t ask. I hate that question anyway. I AM thinking about the future though, and about whether it will be as easy for me to do the things I love if a) I get older and/or b) the market for test automation slows down or comes to a halt.

I’m also noticing that I’m growing increasingly unemployable, in the sense that I can’t see myself working for a boss or manager anytime soon. The prospect of having to deal with end-of-year reviews, billable hour targets and having to say ‘no’ to something I want to do yet might not be in the best interest or directly profitable to the organization makes me never want to return to that anymore. I hope I’ll never have to, ever again. But I don’t worry about that yet, because it’s quite hard NOT to have a freelance project (or three) at the moment. Real first world problem right there!

The message behind all of the above is that in testing and test automation too, there IS a way other than spending 40 hours per week on a given project for months (or years) on end. I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with doing so, but it doesn’t work for me any more, and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone. It DOES take time, effort and above all perseverance, though, to get where you want to be. Whenever I tell someone about an email I received through this blog, asking me to collaborate on a cool project, what they don’t (or even don’t want to) see is all the work I’m putting in writing and publishing a blog post. Every. Single. Week. That takes time. That takes effort. And above all, that takes perseverance. But only by persevering and putting out (hopefully quality) content habitually and sharing your knowledge, expertise and experiences (for free, mostly) will you start getting noticed. And maybe, after a couple of years, there will be some paid spin-off work. It’s worth it. It just doesn’t happen overnight, though.