Sunday 23 May 2010

I'm becoming self-employed


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!

4 reacties:

Tim Kastelle said...

Good luck Martijn! I hope that this works out well for you. You certainly have passion and ideas, which are two key elements of doing well working well for yourself.

Martijn Linssen said...

Thank you Tim! I appreciate your kind and wise words very much. I might tell you more about that someday later ;-)

Anonymous said...

Dear Martijn, you're one of the most interesting people (if not the) I'm following on Twitter. I completely agree with you, I'm living the sad passage from Intimacy to Anonimity in the firm where I'm working since 2002. I can't realize that this was the problem until I have read this post.
I lived the passage to our small familiar reality (with all the related good and bad things) to a multinational reality where the single at the bottom of the working pyramid is related to the top through a chain of people who neither know each other.
I'm losing the passion I've ever had for my job, and this make me sad.
I think asap I'll become self-employed too!
; )
Maura [@Bpossum]

Martijn Linssen said...

Thank you Maura for commenting and your very kind words. I feel sad reading that you're "walking that path", and losing your passion

It's not that I suddenly realised what had happened and then quit, for me this has been a slow and gradual process that took a few years in which I tried, and tried again

But I realised I was losing the passion for my job - that's basically it in a nutshell

There's always an alternative - try that first ;-)

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