02 juli 2005

4 year itch

The day before yesterday was my last day at Twice IT Training. I worked there for nearly 4 years and did a lot of training and a little coaching. Alas, time has come for me to move on. I started at Class-A yesterday and dove right into what I was aiming for when accepting this position: field-work.

The main reason for switching jobs was the fact that I missed being in contact with the "real world" of software development. When you teach Microsoft courses long enough, you'll start living in a make-believe world where everything is MS-goodness. To put it another way, like my ex-colleague Jeroen Hartsuiker used to say it: "We preach from the bible, but when people go home, they read the newspaper. Then it turns out that not everything is as beautiful as we told them it would/should be".

So, I'll be working with Anko Duizer, Astrid Hackenberg and Frits Ankersmit and you might meet me at conferences (again) but with a different shirt. More on my fabulous adventures later.

Twice, thanks for having me! Special thanks to all software development trainers, in particular Henk, Leonard, Annette, Brand, Ernst, Johan and Willem and most importantly Jeroen, my partner in crime. And also big thank-you to Patrick Janssen, who opened up a lot of doors for me at Microsoft.

Comments

# Paul Gielens said:

I think you made the right decision considering your argumentation. And yes it isn’t as beautiful as it could be in the “real world”.

zaterdag 2 juli 2005 11:14
# Frans Bouma said:

Good move and congratulations on your new job! :)

Trainers often tend to fall into the trap of that make-believe world, by using smallish, non-real world examples in courses, 'microsoft's way or the highway'-style teaching etc. Understandable, as telling something very easy to understand makes them more 'rewarded' though frankly, that kind of courses are a waste of time/money.

The same with bookwriters, often trainers. A more advanced book, which doesn't use the paths layed out by Microsoft, doesn't sell, and thus isn't written. You hardly see a trainer/bookwriter leave the paths MS layed out, while most people have problems with the areas outside the paths... where they want to do something slightly different than what MS thought would be done.

Too bad because it's precisely that area which makes it worth buying a book or go to a training, as the other ones just somewhat rehash MSDN docs and examples.

zaterdag 2 juli 2005 12:33
# Patrick Janssen said:

Congratulations Alex!

It's been a pleasure working with you. Learned a lot from your presentation skills, though being a marketeer, lot of the content slipped my mind ;-)

Good luck on your personal development.

maandag 18 juli 2005 17:21