Thinking about work - Issue #341

On Monday, I start a new role at HubSpot: I'll be a solutions architect, having wrapped up five years as a consultant. It's a big change for me: I spent June saying goodbye to clients I'd worked with for years. At the same time, it's a relatively small change: I'll still be advising HubSpot customers on solving their problems with technology.

As a consultant, every year or two, my clients would changeover or embark on big new projects. The work was a steady state of flux. While the software I worked on and my job title didn't change, between new projects and new clients, challenges kept me growing. However, over the past year and a half, I started seeing fewer new projects and clients, and I began to feel stuck. There was far less to write in my weekly observations and questions to ask.

This was one of the things I pondered during my sabbatical: where might I find growth opportunities? I had some discussions outside of HubSpot: they reminded me that this is a good company to work for. Upon my return from the sabbatical, I set my radar to find new challenges: where could I see higher flow of incoming problems to help solve? I talked to the hiring manager on our solutions architecture team: they wanted someone who could put technical solutions into business context for a wide set of HubSpot customers. Bingo.

Starting on Monday, I'll join that team, continuing to help HubSpot's customers solve problems by delivering technical solution designs and recommendations. I'm optimistic that the new flow of challenges will afford me opportunities to grow.

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For the recommended reading this week, I have a few pieces on the future of work:

• Pointless jobs: what happens when your employment isn't connected to anything worthwhile?
• Disappearing jobs: is white-collar work about to shrink like manufacturing shrank?
• AI jobs: are the robots actually and finally coming for our jobs?

Reading