Summary: There have been three big chapters in my career after my foundational days spent in Dallas: Cardinal Solutions, Nationwide Insurance, and Insight. Now, after six months at T. Marzetti, today I find myself thinking back on Insight with a deep sense of gratitude. This post is about taking a moment to reflect on an, at times, uncomfortable set of challenges, and then realizing that it was exactly what you wanted… if not more because it makes you who you were meant to be.

Hold onto, and share, your spark

When I left Nationwide, an engineer I deeply respect told me, “If you only draw Visio diagrams, create plans and go to more meetings than spend time in an IDE, that’s when you stop being an engineer.” I feared he was right. So, I went to Insight, carrying both my coding experience from Cardinal Solutions and my architect’s perspective from Nationwide. More than anything, I went there to build again—to get my hands dirty, break a sweat, be stressed out, earn some keyboard calluses, while fully re-entering learning mode for a solid five-year streak.

It wasn’t easy—but I did it. Through all the challenges, even during The Pandemic, I never felt alone. That’s a credit to the strong, organic culture that existed in the services consulting space at Insight back then. You all did something special, and I’m grateful to have been part of it.

Now, I get to share the lessons from that chapter in my current workstreams and with teammates who are constantly discovering their own excitement for solving problems and having fun while doing it.

In the end, I think this is a message we don’t hear enough of—especially in an era where the quarterly-blade-of-precision of the P&L statement often overshadows a very real person’s growth, actual human value, let alone company culture. It makes me think about the deeper meaning of what a career is in the mid 2020s and beyond.

My advice from all of this? Approach your work with the intention to enjoy it. Get jazzed about the things you build. Invest in your team’s mission—but also, always invest in your own purpose. Let yourself grow and change. It’s funny, way back when I was on that talk circuit, I did some about career growth. I’m still a fan of “if you find yourself comfortable, it’s time to change” and the advice I got about taking off your hat every three years and trying on another. Those pillars have served me well.

I remain profoundly humbled by the opportunities I’ve had, the chance to serve others as they realize their own dreams, goals, and aspirations. My hope is that everyone in the Columbus (and beyond) tech community experiences this same kind of joy and fulfillment. That we don’t lose that in the commercial grind of one era, one bubble, one pivot to the next. We are, at heart, all of us, just kids, with computers, excited by what these connected chips, drives and wires can do to better humanity after all.

As a team lead at Insight, and now an architect at Marzetti, my life goal continues to be to explore, but now with a renewed focus on really allocating time to the people around me and lending a hand while sharing opportunity with the desire to get more people to enjoy problem solving with digital tools. Not just to-make-money or create-a-product. While those are great goals, there is always the “next gig or thing.” You always have yourself, your finite bank of energy/creativity all of which become the trip-tik of your career. That’s the vault where our true life gold is stored.

This is my true wish for all of us, because I’m looking at mine today, and I’m all kinds of happy today.