After finishing University with my Masters of Art degree in the pocket, I wandered around for a few months before joining Capgemini. That was over 13 years ago
Last Friday, I publicly announced that I'm becoming self-employed
Working for Capgemini has been absolutely unique and great. Sure there were bumps and bummers, but it was a 25,000 people multinational when I joined, and now has become a global company with over 100,000 employees - and size helps.
Maybe it seemed an awkward step for someone having studied Languages and Cultures of Latin-America, but I wrote my first game in BASIC at age 11 and have always had a passion for being passionate - about almost anything
However, on Twitter, on this blog, on Yammer, on LinkedIn, and in pretty much every place I am present, over the last few years I have expressed my findings and feelings about big companies, big accounts, and big structures in general
Working for a systems integrator is delicate. There's you and the customer, but there's also your company. The latter consists of your manager, an occassional customer-dependent account manager, a practice manager, a sector manager, and some high-up folks that form the general management layer(s) on top of that. So many people, so many interests - and so many different timelines of planning, making targets, and so on
Over the last months, I've evolved on the ideas of Intimacy versus Anonimity; and found that the Industrial Revolution has forced us from Intimacy into Anonimity, and now Social Media have come around to undo this change. It's not that I oppose to Capgemini's ways of working, I actually think that of the large system integrators of this world, they're adapting or at least trying to do so pretty well. But they're in the game with their customers, partners and suppliers, and all those are, well, big organisations
Stowe Boyd, Dennis Howlett, Hugh MacLeod and David Armano, are among the people most inspiring me to "choose for myself". Especially the relentless org-bashing by Hugh (providing links here would be futile) in all his beautiful and crazy drawings was hard to resist
I don't know what the future will bring. I know what I'll leave behind in the past. I know that some problems encountered in the past might just shift from one area to the other. But I know this: in the future, there'll be me and my customer, making agreements together. Everything we do, we'll do together, and it will be based on a tight relationship formed on top of solid, mutual agreements. Out goes Anonimity, in comes Intimacy
I am greatly looking forward to the future. And I'm honestly and truly humbled by all the congratulations and warm wishes received, via all channels, from all people. Thank you, thank you all!
