Something new in my web development career

I usually try to keep this blog non-personal, but I've been learning a little more about blogging, and apparently I'm supposed to be spontaneous and write about the things that matter most to me. So here's my first post in that vein.

In the past few weeks, I did something I've never done before in my web development career: I accepted a contract job with a company which is not in the web dev industry. I'm still very much self-employed, so this is, in many ways, simply another client. But it will be a different work situation than I'm accustomed to. Over the past ten years, the great majority of my work has been creating new web sites from scratch directly for my clients, the people who pay me. I've been the webmaster, the person solely in charge of the site.

Under this new contract, I'll be much more of a cog in a bigger machine. I'll be working with other web developers, and being assigned to various portions of numerous different projects. I'll probably seldom meet the actual owners of the sites I work on, instead working through the company who has hired me. And rather than making all decisions myself, I'll be following the instructions of others and collaborating.

I still have other work and other clients, but this is the direction I wanted my work to go in: less clients, with whom I work more closely. So I'm pleased, and looking forward to this addition to my work life.