A little over a year ago, I wrote about the parallels between building software and building legos. I wrote about how my career had moved away from building legos, and how much I missed it. And in a second post, I wrote about my career change away from management and back into software development. I’m pleased to say the move has been a good one.
I work as a Product Engineer for Esri. The job is incredibly varied- I start by designing the software, especially the end user experience. A developer on our team will write the production code, and then I test it to make sure it works correctly. It’s a mix of design docs, UX mock-ups, and testing. While testing is often manual, there’s also writing automated tests in Python or C#. I’m working on Esri’s Utility Network Management project, building a next generation solution for electric and gas utilities to manage their networks. It’s been a great mix of using my job experience in that field along with refreshing my technical skills.
More than anything, it’s been fun. Every day I look forward to discussions and problems centered around functionality and design of data models and software, with nary a spreadsheet in sight.
Just after my one year anniversary with the company, Esri gave out foam “lego” sets as conference swag. How wonderfully appropriate.
Thank you, Esri, for letting me build legos again.
Das Haus von Ruh 
I will continue to remind you of the memory I have of the one day in your "dark" past where you triumphantly proclaimed to me you had finally uninstalled your "Lego builder" (Visual Studio). I remember this moment so vividly because at the time it struck me as so wrong – like two mismatched socksSomething was off. It wasn't you. I knew you actually liked to build with Legos and create Lego kits. So I stood there in your doorway, confused – and a rare moment for me, I didn't have anything to say…BUT – I'm glad to see you have come to your senses and you're back to Legos and Lego Kits…you're a damn good at it too. 🙂