I quit my job.

Faculty AI has been an absolutely stellar place to work. The people are fantastic, the work is impactful and I’m incredibly grateful for the part is has played in growing me into the technologist I am! Without my tenure there I wouldn’t have discovered my love for drones & autonomous systems, my dislike of Dynaconf, and my enthusiasm for “pragmatic execution” (which as an ex-academic was a whole new world).

Why, then, do I think it’s time to move on? In a nutshell - ambition.

It’s not a secret that Accenture, an American mega-consultancy boasting in excess of 780,000 employees, has acquired Faculty. I think Marc and the directors have made a fantastic choice for them and their goals, and look forward to the huge successes I’m sure they’ll have in the future!

I joined Faculty from a tiny 4-person start up and, when I joined as part of a bumper cohort in early 2022, we had just crested 200 employees. I could go into the office and, generally, know the name of most people I bumped into. Those days have long since passed, and perhaps it’s the rose-tinted spectacles of nostalgia, but it feels like Faculty has outgrown me (and has plans to grow more, last I heard).

Coming back to the word ambition then. It’s become apparent to me over the past year or so that the ambition of Faculty’s leadership is not a direction of travel that enthuses me. I’ve grown increasingly tired of The Big Con (though I think Faculty does a good job at avoiding this parasitic model), and the idea of our work becoming less less “Scrapyard Challenge” rapid high-impact delivery and more “Harvey Balls” AI transformation does not spark joy.

It’s also the case that I have sneaky ambitions of my own. This blog being one of them! I’ve got some personal projects I’ll now have time to explore (motivation pending) and generally some exciting, growing fields I want to break into.

Either way, this is scary! I’m sad that I won’t be hanging out each day with my fantastic colleagues, but excited for whatever comes next! But first, I think a bit of time off might do me good.