Denver Tech Meetup, Consulting Panel and My Jobs Timeline
If you live in Denver and are involved in open source (or simply technology in general), you should make it a point to attend tonight's Denver Tech Meetup. I'm planning on going for about an hour. From there, I'm heading over to the DeRailed User Group for a Consulting Panel at 8. If you're interested in moving from a full-time position to contracting, you should come. This is open to the public, so anyone can attend.
While I was thinking about things to talk about on the panel tonight, I started reflecting on the jobs I've had in my almost-11-year career in technology. Here's my timeline since college:
- 1997: Full-time at MCI Systemhouse
- 1998: Contractor for IBM Global Services (6 figures w/in 6 months of graduating!)
- April 1999 - April 2001: Full-time for eDeploy.com (Friday lunches rocked)
- May 2001 - October 2001: Contractor for Douglas County (introduced to Ant, Struts, etc.)
- January 2002 - November 2002: Contractor for OnPoint Digital (100% remote)
- December 2002 - August 2003: Contractor for Comcast Media Center
- August 2003 - October 2003: Contractor for ResortQuest
- November 2003 - June 2004: Contractor for Adams County
- June 2004 - August 2004: Contractor for Open Logic
- October 2004 - December 2004: Contractor for Oak Grove Systems
- January 2005 - May 2005: Contractor for Xcel Energy
- June 2005 - January 2007: Contractor for Virtuas
- February 2007 - June 2007: Contractor for Checkerboard
- July 2007 - Present: Contractor for LinkedIn
Phew - that's 14 jobs in 11-ish years! Notice that I've only ever had 2 full-time positions. So far, I have no regrets and really enjoy being a consultant. If you're interested in learning more about how I started Raible Designs or how I get contracts, you might want to read the following posts.
- How I started Raible Designs (Nov 2002)
- How do you become an independent consultant and get contracts? (Jan 2005)
If you live in Denver and want to learn more - show up at the The Hive at 8:00 tonight.
Update June 2008: My 3rd full-time gig started in May. Now I'm the Lead UI Architect at LinkedIn.