pat loughery

Over the past few days, my family has gone through much transition – some good, some not so good. Of the three transitions, I can talk about one of them… in order to knock out some debt and build up our nest egg, I am currently looking for software testing contracts in the ~6 month length. It’s time to dust off my technical skills and go shop around a bit.

It’s an odd position to be in, frankly. I left Microsoft 4 years ago and deliberately chose not to invest the time to keep my technical skills sharp. In the last 4 or 5 years at the company, my primary role was group leadership, leadership development, staffing, planning, that kind of thing. Leading and managing teams. So my hands-on skillset is slightly (ha!) out of date. Raw testing skills are probably more of a “how are you wired” thing than a learned thing, so I think I’m OK there. And team management skills translate fairly well between the business and non-profit worlds. But since there are very, very few contract test leadership positions out there, I’m mainly finding hands-on roles. All of this, of course, affects the pay rates I can expect. I’m hearing a wide, wide range in hourly rates that I can shoot for.

God things are happening in the process, though. I sent out 8 or 10 resumes last Friday to job openings that I found on craigslist, and the first response I got was quite funny. The recruiter manning the anonymouse email address for one job sent: “Hey, Pat, small world – my wife and I just visited your church last Sunday…”. No kidding – of the two couples who came to visit us and worship together on Sunday, one guy is a technical recruiter for a local company with test contract openings.

I’ve had one interview – more of a pre-interview, I suppose – and another one tomorrow.

I have mixed feelings about this: I really have enjoyed being able to slow my life down, spend a lot of time with my daughter and have a good amount of time for reading and study, and the commute has been awesome. But I am also looking forward to interpersonal interaction on a technical level again – and being challenged to learn new things. It should be an interesting time.

Please pray for guidance and for the right opportunity to grab hold of us.