As the title implies, as of July 31, ThoughtWorks and I have decided that the grand experiment that was my employment with them has not turned out the way we both wanted it to, and so I’m now once again an independent.

This isn’t to suggest that ThoughtWorks and I didn’t get along—quite the opposite. During my eleven months with the company, I found some amazing people and had some great times, enough that I still thoroughly recommend them as a company, both to people looking for a great place to work, and to people looking for a company to execute on a project. We just didn’t see eye to eye on a couple of things (such as my desire to remain close to home and my boys, for example). While we might have been able to work things out, there was a chance that it would have generated bad feelings on either or both sides, and we felt it better to part as friends than to push a situation that could potentially turn out bad.

I can take pride in what I accomplished there, for the one thing I could really uniquely do for ThoughtWorks is now at least partly complete: the company is now more deeply connected to Microsoft than it was when I got there. So on that note, I feel like I delivered on what I’d promised, and that’s always a good feeling.

In any event, it was a fun ride, I'm glad to have been a part of it, and maybe, if the circumstances are right, we'll do it again. For now, though, it's off into the sunset I go.

(Which, by the way, means I get to experiment on a different axis—more on that later.)