Rise and Fall of an Information Technology Outsourcing Program: a qualitative Analysis of a Troubled Corporate Initiative

Information technology professional phase
. My professional phase really began with 
that first full-time position following my internship. For the first eight years of my professional 
career, I progressed through a number of junior roles into more senior systems analyst or 
engineering assignments. I had my first opportunities working as part of a larger team and across 
teams. My experiences also included my initial exposure to life inside a corporate bureaucracy 
with its fiefdoms, competition for resources, hidden agendas, seemingly endless number of 
meetings, and “death by PowerPoint.” Having never forgotten the tinge of inferiority, or chip on 
my shoulder, that I carried by not having a four-year degree, I returned to school part-time and 
completed a Bachelor’s degree over the course of a few years. 

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Computer programming provided numerous technical puzzles to solve. I can still recall 
coming into the office, starting work on a particular section of code in the morning, and not 
leaving my desk for hours. I could get lost in the puzzle-solving feedback loop of thinking about 
a problem, writing some code, testing that code until it worked, and then moving on to the next 
problem. Those were wonderful learning experiences for me; however, I began to seek out 
different, larger problems. I transitioned from a technical role to that of a project manager and 
later a business analyst. Where my technical roles were more about solving problems on my 
own, my project manager and business analyst roles were more about solving problems with and 
across larger teams. My aspirations grew to manage a team, but I had my first professional 
experience with rejection when I was turned down for a manager promotion. It was a valuable 
lesson. I had gone into the interview over-confident, even cocksure, that I would get the job. In 
reality, I was underqualified for the position, not yet mature enough for the responsibilities, and 
came across as arrogant during the interview. I eventually earned my first manager assignment 
leading a large team of twenty-five highly tenured and technical engineers and entered the next 
significant phase of my career.