The open gilded cage

A colleague of mine @frankgollas inspired my working situation at Matrix42 in a perfect illustration: the open gilded cage. The door is open free to leave or stay.

Image: Cover of “Bird in a Gilded Cage: A Suffragette Story” by Susan Griffin

I am working at Matrix42 now since April 2006 and have experienced multiple organisational changes through the years. The most influencing events for my work have been building a new product for managing Citrix challenges and the agile transition. Both gave me an incredible boost in personal growth for what I am really thankful.

At the end of 2013 I was working for the Empirum flagship again for the area of OS installations, back where I started 2006. Client management is a kind of “old school” in case of product and technology. The industry of client management was retired by Gartner and moving to the next level with unified endpoint management. Don’t get me wrong, I love endpoint management and described the progress in a special post in November 2016: Matrix42 EPE 4 click like clockwork – 30+ releases in 2016. But after restructuring the area and teams with a new lead, I was asking myself if I wanted to work in this topic for the next two years and how to grow personally. I felt stuck – not only because of my career didn’t change since 2012.

Within the gilded cage, I finally found a well known and simple formula for my decision:

“Love it, leave it or change it.”

Of course it is not that easy in a complex world, but I was asking myself this question more often in the past year. After all changes in 2016 I came to the result, that life offers many more opportunities for me and my lifetime is too short to stay in this position. Seth Godin who really inspires and influences me described this in a short article a few days ago:

Thank you very much for everything!

So after 10 years working for Matrix42, I’ve decided to leave the company with the end of February 2017 for a new journey. It is hard to describe my feelings about the decision, because after such a long time in a company you’ve seen so many things, met so many people and I am connected to the company, because I care.

Matrix42, the people, my colleagues and former colleagues, my team, the customers, partners made me to where I am standing today with my experiences. I feel deeply thankful about everything! Without you I won’t be there, where I am today. Therefore I’d like to use a quote from Dr. Seuss:

“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”

At least an impression from the Matrix42 kick-off, which was an unexpected group presentation outcome of our brain factory. It was a 30 second pitch in front of the company about “what was good in 2016 and should be kept and fully developed?”, what I really enjoyed. Thanks to all group members for this opportunity.

Image: Matrix42 Kick-Off event 2017 at Klassikstadt Frankfurt

What’s next?

A lot of colleagues, partners and customers asked me, where are you going? Are you starting at a competitor? I will answer this question soon and some of you won’t be surprised. The facts so far:

• I won’t change to a competitor.
• I won’t stay in the industry of unified endpoint management nor ITSM.
• I will continue to work as a product owner.

More to come in another post.

Image: “Back to the Future” ending

For those who are interested to stay in contact personally, please add me through the social networks like LinkedIn, Xing or Twitter.

Thank you, looking forward to see you.

All the best wishes,

Patrick