Contract extension! Once again! Yipee!

I am still with my first employer, which is pretty rare in the ICT business! Okay we have been taken over several times and are now part of one of the biggest Canadian ICT companies, also one of the bigger ones in the world!

When I started, I did start as developer. But I quickly realised that my peers were much better and more devoted than me. So, a swithc was necesarry. Due to the fact that I did have to best communication skills of our team(which was more or less filled with hardcore developers), I quickly became more or less a mini project leader! After a few years I did have a manager who told me that maybe it was too soon to go into a management direction and that it was better to have more technical knowledge under my belt before going into a managent/project leader direction.

So I became an information analyst. Starting out as requirement engineer evolving to a hard core Information Analyst. I am still gratefull that that manager pushed me a little bit into this direction. For sure with the ongoing changes in management still and with most companies working now in a Scrum/Devops environment!

All of the above when I was working in house for the company. We did create lot's of mobile applications. We are talking here about the years between 1999 and 2007. So mobile app weren't what they are today! Still we created some kind of Information Services, which was more less the predecessor of mobile internet as we know it today!

After a take-over. The new company decided that there was no future in this and first move this work to Eastern Europe and the UK, before selling it!
So I had to make a decision. The decision was to find a new company or to step over to the consultancy part of the company. I did stay with the company and became a consultant! I even had an intake interview with a customer before my transfer was in order. This was in February 2007. A day after the interview they told the company that they did want to hire me! They also did explain that the intention was that it would be a longer assignment. Read 2 years max! The reason I did switch to the consultancy world is that I could tast other companies and different areas. And if I did find a sector which suited me, that I could find work in that sector!

So, I did start with the client at the 1st of April 2007 as an Information analyst! And today I did get the news that my assignment has been prolonged another (and probably last time) for six month!
So I am not the typical consultant! I have been working for the same client in the past 13 years now (13 full years in April 2020). I do feel more connected to the client than to my own company, which isn't a surprise!
Most people don't even know anymore that I am a consultant. I am working for this client longer than most of the employees these days in the ICT department! During those 12.5 years I did 2 job interviews
with other companies. Each time the deal broke on the financial part!

During these years at the client, I have work on mutiple projects. Most of the time projects of 1 to 2 years. Each time they did find a new project for me, or prologned my assignment in the current one (like this time).

So, yes I am happy with the new contract extension. Looking forward to another years of complex changes in the pension calculator, migration of clients and so on!

Cheers,
Peter