[crawl_soever]

I did a consulting stint in the CNCF and cloud native space for a while(5 yrs). My company was aquired and things really started to be about butts in seats and being billable all the time.

I had a manager I could reach out to but I maybe talked with them once or twice a year. While being able to continue personal development sounds nice on paper, and believe me, the company touted training time and ability to disconnect from customers, I never found the chance to pursue those goals. It was all about being onsite with the customer to bring in those $$ as billable time.

I loved my customers and consider many good friends to this day. However, the toil continued to burn in, not to mention the 100% travel; my personal life began to take a hit.

I got out of consulting and work as an engineer now. It was a valuable experience, and I worked with some really cool customers. But my personal life comes first and I now expect a certain level of support from my workplace now.

I do miss the network I made as a consultant, and a certain amount of travel is nice. Being able to drive innovation through digital transformation in a 60+ yr old organization leaves a good feeling of purpose. I wish there was some sort of happpy medium.