I’m leaving Gomez, my current employer, as of next Friday, July 25th. It’s been a great ride. Over the last ~2 years, with Gomez, and an additional year as the founder of Autoriginate/HostedQA, I’ve had a tremendous opportunity to work on really amazing products in the QA/testing/SaaS space.
But it’s also been tough, especially the frequent flights between Portland, OR and Boston, MA, and I’m looking to either pursue an MBA graduate program and/or move back to the San Francisco bay area, where I’m originally from. I’m on the waitlist at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business full-time MBA program, and if that doesn’t pane out I’ll be re-applying to several bay area schools next year while also looking for new opportunities in the bay.
I don’t have anything specific lined up. My plan right now is to spend the rest of the year carefully weighing my next steps. I’m looking at a lot of different options: grad school, another startup, joining a bay area company (ideally a startup focussing on consumer/social media), or possibly even doing something “out there” like joining the PeaceCorps or some other field work in an impoverished country. In the more immediate term, I’d likely be working on mioNews in between planning my next steps.
With that in mind, I’m open to hearing from my friends and readers about what I should do next. Find a job in Portland, OR or the bay area? Perhaps someone has participated in the PeaceCorps and has advise? Or perhaps someone is out there looking for help in software development and/or product management leadership at their startup? Let me know - the idea of so many options excites me!
on Jul 16th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
[...] Blogbody Patrick Lightbody’s personal blog « Leaving Gomez, what should I do next? [...]
on Jul 16th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
[...] in August and I find it increasingly unlikely that I’ll be getting in. Fortunately, I have other plans. One of the many options I’ll be considering is re-applying to Stanford and [...]
on Aug 2nd, 2008 at 4:11 am
[...] meeting up with a lot of people and companies, trying to figure out what the best place for me to go next [...]
on Aug 4th, 2008 at 6:48 am
How about moving to Beijing. You will love it :).
on Aug 24th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Hi Pat,
What makes you decided to leave the software development line? I’ve been thinking about doing MBA myself too, maybe moving more towards management side rather that staying coding forever, not that I don’t like it but sometimes it’s just a bit too overwhelming. The things that’s holding me back doing a full-time MBA is that I need to pay for loans, so can’t really afford a full-time MBA, as for part-time, I’m just not sure if my current workload allows me that option yet.
Anyway, still whatever route you’ve taken, I’d like to wish you all the best.