I don’t discuss work on this blog very often. My company’s clients are very secretive and don’t like their projects being mentioned in public. But this post isn’t about clients – it’s about my own role and a difficult choice I’ve recently had to make.

For the last four and a half years I’ve been working at interactive agency Tobias & Tobias. In the time I’ve been there a lot’s changed: the company has grown, we’ve taken on many new clients, and I’ve had a number of different roles, most recently as head of the combined strategy & user experience teams.

Screenshot of Tobias & Tobias website

I’ve really enjoyed working at T&T. I’d never stayed in the same company for more than three years until this job, which is a testament to the people and the culture.

But all good things must come to an end, and it’s with great reluctance that I’ve decided to move on to another role, as an associate creative director at SapientNitro.

In terms of size, the two companies are poles apart. SapientNitro is part of a group that employs 7,000 people in 30 offices worldwide, while Tobias & Tobias has 30 people in one office. But in other ways I think the companies are quite similar.

Specifically, I think that both companies have a similar approach to quality in the user experience and information architecture work that they do. I feel qualified to say this because I’ve interviewed a lot of UX practitioners, and most of the best portfolios I’ve seen have been presented by people with long stints at SapientNitro. This is a big part of the reason why I chose to join SapientNitro. The last thing I’d want to do is move to a company that didn’t take user experience seriously.

Obviously it’s going to be a big change for me – I’ve worked in large organisations before, but it’s been a while since I was in an office so big it was a challenge to remember everyone’s name. But I’m looking forward to having the resources of a large company to draw upon, and a large pool of new colleagues & clients to work with, learn from, and – hopefully – help out in some way.

The current plan is that I’ll start at SapientNitro from November 1st and will be working at their office in Spitalfields, a much more convenient location than Kensington Olympia! But while I won’t miss the extended Overground journeys and the constant roadworks outside our office, I will miss working at Tobias & Tobias, and plan to stay in touch (which means that, yes, I will be gatecrashing the Christmas party!)…