It\u2019s been a heck of a year.<\/p>\n
I joined a new team at MS fourteen months ago, and it\u2019s been the busiest fourteen months of my career. To be fair, I worked more hours during my stint in Xbox One, but the role I\u2019m in now has even more responsibility (more on what that means some other time). Since I haven\u2019t really blogged much since I joined the team, perhaps a recap is in order for context.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m working on a yet-unannounced, and possibly-soon-to-be-released product. I was hired as \u201cthe quality guy\u201d, but expanded the role over the time I\u2019ve been on the team to take ownership of all of our build and release infrastructure as well. Basically, I\u2019m responsible for everything from the moment code is checked in (including check-in quality gates), until it hits our production servers (at this time, \u201cproduction\u201d is for beta users only). This includes our CI system, build systems, test infrastructure, deployment, and a bit of manual testing as well. To this end, I\u2019ve ventured back into management, and manage a small handful of full time employees, as well as a larger handful of temporary (vendor) testers. I\u2019m responsible for making sure we have systems and strategies that enable us to get a good product to our customers frequently. I make sure the code is ready, and that the product is well-tested. It\u2019s also my call on whether \u2013 and when to push bits to our production environment. It\u2019s a killer job, but one deep in my wheelhouse. I\u2019ve grown in many ways over the last year, and learned even more. <\/p>\n
But it\u2019s taken away a bit of who I am. I don\u2019t write much anymore. I speak much less than I used to, and I\u2019ve all but disappeared from twitter (one plus is that I\u2019ve been really happy with the AB podcasts<\/a> that Brent and I have been delivering). While part of me is growing and learning, another part of me is withering and dying. <\/p>\n So I need to make a change. Not necessarily a change as big as changing jobs or changing companies, but I need to remember that my job is just a job<\/em>, and it\u2019s not who I am. Like a lot of people, I lose sight of that sometimes, and I need to see if I can get myself back on track \u2013 and start by (re) connecting with the community that inspires me and drives me to do even better things.<\/p>\n