An eclectic IT career: Mayo Takeuchi

During my period of career turbulence - which actually began as far back as 2014 if my retrospection is correct, but officially began in early December of 2017 - one recurrent talking point that my employer's CHRO and CEO both expounded upon was how they sought resources who were (not their words, I'm being succinct) emotionally intelligent and mentally flexible . Another trending topic from both the HR and economic viewpoints, particularly in North America, seems to be that of how millennials are contributing increasingly to the creation of a " gig economy " - seemingly voluntarily jumping from contract to contract. In both cases, it helps to possess a curious nature: learning curves, be they academic or social, are best scaled when one inherently enjoys the process of acquiring knowledge and then applying it. However, the bigger mental challenge might, in my opinion, be to keep an unflagging sense of optimism about impending change. We may speak to it, but actua

Those of you familiar with my LinkedIn profile , not to mention my prior post from early 2018, would not fail to notice that the stability I'd enjoyed in the field of SEO consulting showed signs of being disturbed. Specifically, I took a scenic detour into the realm of (the IT sense of) Ontologies and Taxonomies. Recently, my spouse asked me how I'd describe the post-SEO role I'd held for 12 months. Promptly, I replied that my mission was to extend and develop a set of ontologies that would serve as the framework for taxonomies both used and potentially useful to my employer's Marketing division. At this point, it would be helpful for me to step back and put that in less abstract terms, I'm thinking. While most people are familiar with taxonomies from taking a unit of animal species classification - where we heard of things like Phylum and Genus, there is a vital need for such entities in categorizing and managing every type of content. Furthermore, not all ta

Despite resolving to attempt smaller, more frequent blog posts a few years ago, I'm back after another multi-month hiatus with this one. Due to the rarity with which I've been updating this blog, Google has de-indexed all but three of my pages on this site, but actually that's not the main reason for this newest piece of content, which is perhaps more personal than is typical of this blog. Over ten and a half years ago, I chose to make a lateral move (for a manager who kindly took his chance on me), and due to circumstances , I am once again in a situation where at least organizationally, moving has become necessary. Moving great distances, not only physically but professionally and culturally, has been something I had been willing - and able - to undertake in the past. My CV, which lists a career history spanning Toronto, Boston, and Dublin (and my initial move States-side for third level education) attests to this. Lately however, my reasons for not uprooting myself (

Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to have some in-person time with one of my employer's vice presidents. My card-holding manager invited me and one of the colleagues I've worked with the longest, to visit a different office location and to cover some SEO news topics over the course of a half hour. While I was quite content to split this time allocation evenly, I also had a disproportionately large amount of information to cover, although I was quite selective in topic choice (our team has gained momentum and, hopefully, a wider sphere of influence since moving organizationally last year). Since this opportunity arose with very little lead time, I also decided to use pre-existing slides (which I only provided some feedback to create, not as primary author). It could have easily taken an hour to cover just my section in proper detail, but also in trying to meet some "business as usual" deadlines, my attention remained painfully divided even during the hours just prio

It seems to me that it's increasingly becoming a frightening new world that we live in. Back when the internet was merely nascent, I was studying psychology in college: numerous examples hammered home to me the notion that we, collectively, are easily manipulable, emotionally, cognitively, and that our memories are scarily labile, too. Over three years ago, I'd blogged about  Google+ increasing its reach , which has since apparently been adopted by many more people . Sure, a small fraction of its estimated 2.2 billion + account holders are publicly posting content - but Google has access to all the trackable behaviours of everyone who remains authenticated, not to mention numerous third party cookies and ways metrics are being recorded. Last summer, amongst other topics I'd read the coverage on Facebook's 1-week, 700K user experiment on emotional contagion, which is well summarized in the Atlantic . Then, about a week ago, another piece was brought to my attention

Several colleagues of mine recently attended this year's Internet Summit in the US, so not unexpectedly, lots of advice came couched in the form of American-friendly metaphors. I'd lamented some years before about culture-specific expressions, and how they confuse non-native speakers, but given my heritage, the advice cited in the blog title actually "struck home" (baseball pun not intended). Perhaps a soccer metaphor would be more recognizable to those outside of North America, in which case it would likely be to strive for strategic passes and goal assists, and to value the role of Libero (or sweeper) rather than fixate on scoring goals or becoming an ace striker. In any case, this advice pertains to keeping a blog fresh - a topic that I've been mindful of, having started several draft posts since my prior entry in April, which have not seen the light of day. So, here I am wading back into the fray, as it were, by taking said advice. From now on, if I find

Try the quiz linked via the graphic, to answer 20 questions all skewed towards extroverts Most of my socal media profiles openly declare my self-identification as an INTJ (estimated to comprise 1-2% of the population, and popularly depicted in fiction as antagonists or anti-heroes). I've tested as such since I was 11, though during my university years I came close to registering as INTp. Of course, Myers-Briggs has had numerous valid detractors , and one criticism is that the dichotomies of I-E etc. are not quantified by the labeling: that is, one cannot tell just how strongly introverted I believe myself to be. And since it's a self-identifying classification, one could easily delude oneself into believing that inclination is manifesting directly into actions, meaning that others may not classify one as belonging to that type at all. Nevertheless, lately there have been quite a bit of confrontation between the two camps, where one normalizes one's preference and m