Job Change Dead Ahead

Om Malik posted a quote from John Gruber’s Daring Fireball blog that got me thinking:

You can obsess over your work, build an audience based on deep mutual respect, and eventually opportunities to earn money from it will present themselves. I don’t know how it works, I only know that it does. ( original article )

13 years ago, I started doing just that. I participated in the community that was building around Check Point FireWall-1. Granted, it was part of my day job, but I obsessed over helping people and learning new and interesting things about the product. I built an audience, both with an FAQ site and a mailing list. I eventually parlayed that into:

• 2 books on Check Point FireWall-1 (they made money, but not gobs)
• For a period of time, a nice side income in terms of direct advertising revenue on phoneboy.com (now, not-so-much)
• A job at Nokia supporting Check Point FireWall-1 on Nokia Security Appliances
• A job at Check Point Software (pending the close of Check Point’s acqusition of Nokia’s Security Appliance Business).

In reality, though, I’ve had a dream job. I’ve been able to help shape an organization that provides network security solutions to much of the Fortune 500. I’ve helped countless customers, some directly, many indirectly through some of my efforts. Most importantly, I’ve been able to do this with a fair amount of autonomy from the comfort of my own home! The paycheck was pretty good, too!

With the upcoming change to Check Point–which is now only a matter of time–I will have a different job, working for a different company doing different things. I have high hopes for my new job, though it will undoubtedly be different.