Move up or over?
In the summer of 2014, the owners of my employer at the time chose to stop investing in the company and close it down, just as we had performed a series of very successful field demos for the prototype of our new flagship product. This product had been my primary focus for two years, pushing me to some of my best engineering efforts. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory! That shutdown took the wind out of my sails, making me wonder if I wanted to ever work that hard on anything ever again. In particular, I wasn't sure I wanted to tie my career so tightly to a single employer. After taking some time off, I chose to pursue shorter-term employment via both contracts with technical temp firms and independent consulting. Both turned out to be more difficult than I had anticipated. In particular, the list of contacts and references I had built over the years had been depleted by retirements and relocations: My network had largely evaporated. ...