Dave Donaldson

Going Independent

Wednesday, August 18 2004

For those who read James Avery's post a couple days ago, this is going to sound very familiar with some of the same points being made. If it sounds like a broken record, I apologize, but over the last few days James and I came to realize that he and I think a lot alike, to the point where it's kind of scary :-)

As I'm sure you guessed by now, I'm making my official announcement that I'm quitting my normal day job and am going completely independent. I've spent the last 5+ years (half my career) as a developer and architect for Nationwide Insurance and feel that now is the right time to pursue the other career opportunities that have kept me up until 3 AM every night for the last several months. My last day at Nationwide is Sept 3, so as of Sept 6 I'm on my own.

I've never been more excited and nervous at the same time. I'm going to spend the rest of this post kind of breaking down my reasoning behind the decision.

Why do this?

Plain and simple: working for someone other than myself will never allow me to work on the things I really want to do. I want to build high quality software. That's what gets me out of bed in the morning and keeps me up until the wee hours so that I only average 4 hours of sleep. Nothing more, nothing less. It's my one true passion, and I've realized that to really focus on that, I have to do one of two things: go work for a software company or create my own (more on the software company that starts with “Micro” and ends with “soft“ in a bit).

Why now?

This was by no means a snap decision. This has been in the works for quite awhile, back to around Christmas-time of last year. Back then, I wasn't too serious about it more than a general nice-to-do-in-the-future kind of thing. But as the months wore on, the thought became more real and I began doing lots and lots of research. All that homework didn't scare me off; it actually helped put my mind at ease. I began to put a plan together, wrote down tons of notes, thoughts, and ideas. I started making some contacts around the industry and began putting out feelers. I got a lot of good feedback, and heeded it carefully.

Over the last few weeks, all the stuff I've been working on trying to make this happen finally came together and I felt that if I didn't grab the opportunity now, I might lose it - so I grabbed it.

But you've got a family.

A wife, 3 kids, and a dog to be exact (and don't forget about the mortgage and car payments). So yeah, that's quite the load to think about, and believe me, it was and always will be the first thing I think about in any decision I make. But the one person who has always been behind me 100% is my wife Amy, and this was no exception. She has been with me on this every lock-step of the way. Without her complete support, I wouldn't have been able to do this.

Why not Microsoft?

Over the course of time, I've made several good contacts inside Microsoft, and for a while there, that was all I wanted to do. It seems just too natural of a fit and looked like the perfect place for me to spend much of the rest of my career. I actually went through a couple different rounds of interviews with them, but nothing ever panned out (the interviews all went pretty well, and it seemed like I would get an offer or two, but I came to find out that the positions were closed for various reasons; one of my favorite interviews was for a PM spot on Brad Abrams' CLR team - that was a good phone interview that I'll share later).

Anyway, as time went by I kept working on going independent and came to realize that at this point in my life and career, I need to work for myself. I feel that I need to try this out and see where it goes. Of course, I'll always entertain anything Microsoft throws my way, but as of now, I'll go with this and see what happens.

And what exactly will you be doing?

The primary goal of my company (name forthcoming) is to create software. I have a couple ideas (some abstract, some concrete) that at some point I hope will come to fruition. To get to that point, I'll be doing project consulting work and will be spending much more time on my writing. I already have a few things in the pipeline, just gotta get some paperwork signed, sealed, and delivered.

Influences

There are 3 people I'd like to thank for providing valuable information while I was researching all this: Eric Sink (for his Business of Software columns on MSDN and his sound approach to starting a small software shop), Scott Mitchell (for his Going Independent blog posts), and DonXML (for his consultant rate worksheet). I don't know either of them personally, but they each provided quality info and things to think about when making the move to independence.

I have much more info to share about this topic, but I'll save it for future posts.