Some inquiring minds are asking offline why I'm posting again, and what some of my cryptic remarks over the previous months meant...
Recently, I left a large consulting and professional services fim, through which I was assigned to a top specialty retailer.
I had actually started out as staff at the retailer, which subsequently outsourced me (and others) to the consulting firm. My leadership at the retailer had been very supportive of my maintaining a personal professional identity and brand, and publishing generic material (non-proprietary and written on my own time) that would one day be compiled into a book. When I was transitioned to the consulting firm, the rules changed; they are in the business of buying and selling ideas about IT and any writings I created, even on my own time, they technically owned.
I don't fault or resent them for this; it is simply how a consulting and professional services firm needs to work. If I were an Intel engineer, I would not be able to design and patent a microchip "on my own time." It's a conflict of interest.
I now am employed by a large financial institution; they are in the business of buying and selling money in various forms (not IT ideas & services), and so I now have a little more freedom to go back to writing (keeping it generic and on my own time, of course).
-ctb
