A business called “Another Angle Solutions LLC” sounds just vague enough to be in tech, while also corporate-acceptable. That was the goal after trying over 20 other names, all of which either did not have domain name availability, the social handles were already registered to the nines, or were already trademarked.

When the business finally metamorphosed into an LLC, it was to separate my work nonsense from my personal nonsense in perpetuity. Despite my best efforts, my personality refuses to be boxed up on the other side of the Venn diagram, so here we are with a blog post.

I don’t believe anyone has come into this world with a true grasp on their career path, and that was certainly true for me. As time goes, perhaps this knowledge is gleaned by middle school, or college, or some fortuitous stroke of grown-up fate. One hopes that moment is striking and impressive, while also perfect for use in a future business article.

I’m not sure this story fits that mold, really. Yet here we are.

Pretext

After twisting and turning through technical careers as a software developer, business analyst, and finally a QA automation engineer, I landed into non-employment. Again.

I reflected on the characters and souls I’d met at each plateau. Who do I want to be more like? Who do I follow on LinkedIn to be sure I never accidentally find myself on their team in the future?

What’s fun? Does fun matter at work? How am I supposed to enjoy what has to be done? How does anyone do that?

I don’t have answers (other than “42”), but I do have hunches.

When I reviewed these past roles and all of the jobs I did between the lines, I found that there were a few key threads that kept coming up. Some of them I wanted to continue, including:

• Digging into weird technical messes and sorting them out.

• Helping folks understand what the heck is going on.

• Connections. What and who is connected, and why. Systems and people included.

• Fun people. Not necessarily funny people, but folks who have ups and downs, possibly strange hobbies, and have a sense of humor.

• Tech. I like messing with code, learning new systems, and seeing what’s next.

• Breaking things on purpose, for fun and profit.

• Experimentation and creation. Some of my best work happened when I was given leeway to build something different for a problem, and show it off. Some of these experiments even led to the next role or a surprise project.

I also enjoyed the work of software QA, but not necessarily the culture. Folks in IT and cybersecurity probably get where I’m going here: delivering unwanted news or asking for collaboration when you are positioned as a bottleneck is very hard. I did my darnedest to be a team member, an ally, a solutions-bringer, and a story teller to turn that ship around. Even with my ✨sparkling ✨ personality and optimism, it was tough going.

When it was time to look for the next thing, I felt like these problems were not the problems I wanted to have.

I wanted better problems.

Ah-ha!

I continued to soul search under the guidance of personal and career coaches until landing on the idea of a tech consultancy. This would give me the platform to do whatever in tech for companies I wanted to work for, without necessarily boxing me in right away. At this point, I didn’t know for sure what title I was, but I had a few ideas. Most important: I knew that I wanted to help solopreneurs, tech leads, CTOs, crazy software folks, and anyone in charge of software at their company with the weird tech stuff.

Bringing this back to my skills, software dev and Postman were at the top of the list. Technical project management and writing tech walk-throughs were also in the mix. I’ve also taught a thing or two, and tried to make those sessions enjoyable for me and my students. Finding the job title that overlapped all of these perfectly, though, didn’t seem possible in English or JSON.

However, I was on an Agatha Christie audio book binge. Listening through the tales of Hercule Poirot, savoring the confusion of the story until the logical resolution, was a balm for my brain. My career might’ve been uncertain, sure, but Poirot was about to sort out how the pet dog relates to the murder, and I and Hastings would soon know that, too.

So I did what an entrepreneur does: I started anyway.

And then?

I told one person about being an “API detective” during a coaching session, and it was received well.

I didn’t need to sit with it long. I spoke it, and there it was: The API detective was born.

I took that idea and ran. And I’m still running.

For me, API detective work combines the unknowing of tech’s complexity with figuring it out, both of which I have a knack for. There’s still something thrilling about sorting out why a broken thing is that way, or even discovering that it’s broken in the first place.

Let’s work together.

We’ve reached the end of the story, new friend.

If I sound like the person you want to work with on your next API mystery, that’s great. Connect with me through the various portals on my site, AnotherAngleSolutions.com.

If you don’t have any API problems yet, bookmark me. Someday, you likely will. Apps will need to talk to other apps for a long, long time.

Until then, take care of yourself. And stay out of trouble, for once. 👋