Answers to Common Resume Questions

Why do you have so many resumes?

I have a lot of skills, and I have worked for a lot of companies, so my resume grew very large.  Long resumes are very unpopular these days, so I broke it into several resumes that each focus on a different skill.  Download the resume that best matches what you are looking for, and feel free to peek at the rest to see what else I do.

What is it, exactly, that you do?

I solve complicated problems for companies that have gotten stalled and need help getting back on track.  If the problems were easy, they would just assign a person to solve them, but it is often difficult to know how to approach complex problem.  You need someone who has experienced similar problems and knows what helps and what makes the problem worse.  That is where I come in.  I have generalized theories so that I have solutions over a broad range of problems, so I do not fit into easy categories any more.

Do you do full-time work or consulting?

I do both.  I am incorporated, insured, and I understand the IRS regulations on contractors, so if you need an independent consultant, you can hire me without risk of IRS penalties.  If you would rather have me as a W2 employee, I know how to let my corporation go dormant.

Are you a manager or a hands-on worker?

I have always looked for complex problems to solve.  Sometimes a well-organized company is just a little short on staff needed to finish their project on time.  In that case, I have skills in many areas to offer.  Just add me to the team that is behind, and I will roll up my sleeves a get to work.

In other cases, companies have structural problems to solve.  Maybe they have lost some critical leadership.  Maybe interdepartmental conflicts have the project stalled.  Maybe a new department had to be hired.  In these cases, I am more valuable as a manager.  I have had titles from group lead to Vice President of Engineering.

Do you do IT projects, or just engineering?

I came to management through product development.  Products regulated by the FDA, the FAA and NSA require formal development processes crafted through years of successes and failures in thousands of major projects.  These processes have enabled the evolution of the industry from hacking a few bytes of assembly code to huge development efforts on fixed budgets and tight schedules.  There is an enormous amount of research out there on how to develop products, and there is explosive growth in development methodologies.

As I started taking on IT projects, it occurred to me that IT is often several years behind product development and manufacturing in their adoption of best practices.  The emerging standards, such as ITIL, can generate more overhead than productivity improvement.  But the line between developing and maintaining large products and large networks is vanishing, and an increasing number of the people in IT are, technically, software developers.

This plays right into my strength.  IT organizations are ripe to benefit from the cutting edge software development methodologies, such as Agile, Lean Development and Test Driven Design.  I have never seen an IT organization that does not have bugs in their systems, and I have rarely seen an organization with any kind of significant QA staff or processes.  Software developers have been refining QA for decades.

Most of the IT staff I have worked with were very bright and extremely capable within their specialty.   But their success was dependent on coordination of requirements, schedules, third-party deliverables, and shared resources with other groups.  Coordination and communication were often not within their specialty.  I have had great success both doing the communication and coaching people to be better communicators.  Once everyone understands the process, they use the process and thing go smoothly.
 

Why are there gaps in the last couple years?

Before 2008, I had continuous full-time or contract work. I deliberately took a few weeks for a vacation and sabbatical once, but often contract work overlapped with no break in between.   I took the summer of 2008  off to have a baby.  That seems to have put me right into the biggest slump in employment in modern history, so I went back to consulting and started researching some of my pet theories on Lean software development.  I have had several nice contracts since then, but work is thinner these day, so I have had some time to be with the baby, and to write papers for conferences.