I build castles

Recently a teenager I know very well asked me, "So what DO you do?" When I'm asked what I do for a living I am faced with summarizing my job in a way that is understandable to this person. Often they do not have a technical background. Telling someone I develop custom, business facing solutions for companies using a commercial platform as a service (PaaS) toolset gets exactly what you would expect; a blank stare. So, what DO I do? I build castles.

For purposes of our discussion I likened ServiceNow to the insanely popular Minecraft game. In Minecraft my friend can build whatever he wants with a prebuilt set of tools. Farms? Yes. Castles? Sure. He has a platform to work with. So do I. My customers pay me to help build all sorts of useful applications to help their businesses.

While he still may not know the details of everything I do he walked away with a better understanding of:

• What I do: I build useful things with a platform toolset.
• Who I do it for: I build useful things for customers who want to solve something.
• What I build: Applications to solve that something for my customer. In other words, I don't build the same thing over and over.

Sometimes, with great customers, I get to build castles, in the sky!

​What DO you do?

​Photo by Cederic Vandenberghe on Unsplash