15 Years an IBMer

In a previous post, I wrote about how I ended up at IBM. I finished that post with a question: Will I still be here in another 10 years? Well, I’m half-way to finding out, but I’m no closer to an answer.

The last 5 years in the Emerging Technologies group have flown by. The last three years of which have been pretty much dominated by my work on Node-RED. It’s been a lot of hard work, but it has been incredibly satisfying work. I’m very fortunate to be in this position; not everyone gets to turn a side-project they created into a job.

That said, as I spoke about in my Monkigras talk this year, when a side-project becomes a job, it risks becoming a chore. I have to continually make sure I strike a balance between the fun and the not-so-fun parts. I don’t always get that balance right which can make it harder work than it should be.

So what of the next 5 years? No doubt Node-RED will continue to be my focus for now, but that doesn’t stop me wondering what else I could be doing.