I had left the small consulting firm to go to work for Booz Allen prior to getting married and worked there for two years. It was a formative experience. Taught me a lot about PowerPoint, politics, and polishing prose for paying or prospective clients. After a couple years there I moved on to a small consulting group in Baltimore. We bought a house in Columbia smack dab between Baltimore and Washington DC.
I bought a small boat and then later a C&C 32 that we kept in Annapolis at Annapolis Landing Marina. This will become important later!
I got a job with Black & Decker as a Director of Application Development working for a guy that I had doubts about during the interview process but joined his team anyway. Turns out that we just could not communicate. I thought it was me for a while. Then other people joined the organization and it turns out the guy was pretty much bonkers. Felt a little slow in that it took me so long to come to that conclusion. In any case I was on the road to being fired when some reorganizations happened under the power of a new leader for Information Technology, Logistics, Distribution, and Transportation.
This was the beginning of some interesting times as I moved into a role serving as Director of Technology reporting to the VP of Technology and Operations whot reported to the leader that I mention above. This is harder to write than it should be given that I am leaving out names so I am going to cut right to the chase...I survived a number of trying professional ordeals and saw a lot of changes in the management team at all levels ultimately including the top guy. He left to teach at a very prestigious University in the Washington Metro Area. For some reason he is not teaching anything to do with Information Technology, Logistics, Distribution, and Transportation (luckily for the students).