<p>I can't believe it's already been 90 days!  I started at <a href="https://www.improving.com/">Improving</a> as a Principal Consultant on August 11th and it's been a really wild ride since then.  Having spent nearly 21 years at <a href="https://www.biworldwide.com/">BI Worldwide</a> as a FTE there are quite a few things to adjust to moving into consulting.</p>
<h2>Learning Upon Learning</h2>
<p>With any job change, whether at a new role in the same company or at an entirely new company, there is learning involved.  However I've found there to be far more aspects to this learning than I expected.  During the couple weeks between turning in my resignation and starting at Improving I was thinking about learning GCP and Grafana best practices (both part of my first project).  But once I got started I realized just how much I didn't know.  New commute, new door system, new HR system, new office layout, new inter-department dynamics, new computer configurations, and so many other new things I won't bother listing them all.</p>
<p>I should be clear here though: this was incredibly exciting and even exhilarating.  I love learning and new challenges, both of which I now have in abundance!</p>
<h2>Good in All the Right Ways</h2>
<p>Throughout this transition --and even before I really started looking for a new job-- I have spent a lot of time thinking about what is important to me. I had to determine what I was hoping to get out of a change if for no other reason than to be clear I wasn't leaving out of spite. In talking to people in my life about this change and how it's going I have often used the phrase that this job is "better in all the ways that I wanted it to be better" which sounds very superficial, but it really reflects how I'm feeling. There were some parts of my old job that were pretty awesome, but they just did not outweigh the terrible parts.</p>
<p>It's a really weird feeling, though, to be working on something that isn't really mine and that I'm gonna be walking away from after a few months. After all, I spent the last decade of my life building an entire ecosystem from scratch.  However, now that I'm a quarter in I can say that I really thought that I would miss this far more than I do. Maybe at some point in the future I will want to get back to something long-term that I get to control the roadmap on but for right now this seemingly negative thing is actually a complete non-issue. In fact, the transition from project to project is still quite exciting to me and will help me learn more technologies, more things about business and most importantly, more things about myself.</p>
<h2>Missing Friends</h2>
<p>Far and away my biggest concern with leaving and the biggest reason that I stayed at BIW as long as I did were the amazing friends that I got to work with every day. Some of them I've been friends with for nearly half my life and the idea that I got to work with them was really special. I can't even really come up with the words to try and convey how heart wrenching it was to make the decision to end that era in my life. As I've told them: one key part of this new era is to make sure that I stay connected to them and they continue to be part of my life. I'm still figuring this out and learning how to be just friends with them and not coworkers that I'm also friends with. In some ways, it's very freeing and exciting to get to know them without the baggage of work but it certainly takes a lot more effort to see them and keep up with them now.</p>
<h2>The Irony</h2>
<p>It definitely is not lost on me that the mission of my new company is exactly what is at the core of what I think is wrong with my old company. Our mission (in my own words) is to help companies learn to trust and value their technology organizations. The lack of this trust was evident to me for years at BIW but I had been feeling like their opinions were changing until earlier this year when leadership made it clear how they still felt. The lightness I feel in conversations and in my daily work that results from this significant change really can't be put into words. Over all the years I had clearly become numb to how this impacted me both during my working day and outside of it.</p>
<h2>Looking Ahead</h2>
<p>At this point, I'm very convinced that this was the right decision for me. I didn't really have concerns that it wasn't but I'm far enough into it now that I am absolutely certain. I'm really looking forward to continuing to settle in to this new job and pattern of learning and everything that it brings to my life.</p>


Adam Dehnel

This is Me

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Consulting 90 Day Check-In