I’ve finally made the leap, and am now consulting as my own independent entity. I’ve worked at many wonderful consulting agencies over the years and happily still have a good relationship with each of them, but for some time now I’ve wanted to move more and more into building products. Unfortunately, thus far no one has wanted to hire me as a junior Product Manager or Developer for anywhere near the same salary I’ve been getting as a Principal Consultant, so in order to pursue my product dreams, I needed to reduce my commitment to consulting and find a more flexible arrangement.
I will continue consulting, because I want to stay informed and have current practical experience with implementation (plus I got to keep paying my bills). But without an agency as a “go between”, I can work fewer billable hours and have more time to work on products and projects. Don’t get me wrong: agencies as a “go between” provide a lot of value: I won’t pretend to not be daunted by marketing, sales contracts, benefits and taxes. But thus far, it’s been a great growing experience for me. And I’m lucky to have a very supportive network as I branch into the unknown.
So now I have a chance to work on some other projects, like fixing up/modernizing the beacon parser, and other projects I’ll post about shortly (stay tuned!) I’ll also continue working with Cognetik for a few exciting initiatives they have going on, so you will see me on their blog still occasionally. And there are some other agencies I’m eager to work with still if it doesn’t interfere with my product dreams, so this may or may not last long.
I already have a good amount of independent work to keep me busy for the next few months, so this post isn’t me necessarily soliciting for more work (unless you happen to have the PERFECT project for me, in which case, let’s talk!) But if you want to talk about products and opportunities, please reach out! I’m now at jenn@digitalDataTactics.com.
