Changing Careers
I decided 5-years ago to change my career.
I had worked in software engineering for nearly 25 years (mostly configuration management tools, compilers, debuggers, and recently QA). During that time, I always felt that my best contributions were in nurturing and caring for my engineering team.
When I started at Plaxo, I didn’t know I would end up “in HR”. Instead, I came at it through staffing. As an engineering manager, I had always been good at recruiting for my team and for other’s teams.
However, recently, when our new CEO started up, he offered me the opportunity to build Plaxo’s HR department.
In all those 25-years of working in engineering, I had never witnessed what I would call a “great” HR department. Although I have worked for some notable companies (including such great companies as H-P, SGI, and WebMD) I had never been part of or seen what I considered a great HR group (well, there was one; Kandis, where are you? 
). So, I don’t have a model of what “greatness” means in HR. But I have a great engineering team, a top set of founders and executives to work with, and I’ve recently found someone who will be my mentor/coach.
That’s it for today. I’ll re-visit this site on a regular basis and let you know how things go. I’m busy preparing for a “situation analysis” presentation with my coach this Friday and I have a tactical plan that takes me through October ‘05.