So I was cleaning out my old laptop last Tuesday night, right? Found this dusty folder called “Career_Ramblings” hidden behind a bunch of vacation photos. Clicked open a doc titled just “Sutherland Notes” and holy moly, it all came flooding back – Shawn Sutherland’s wild ride. Felt like I had to share it right then.
The Spark That Started It
It began years ago at this terrible startup gig I had. Think cheap coffee and cheaper ideas. Shawn was this quiet dev guy three desks over. Nobody really noticed him, you know? Then one Friday, the boss announces some huge client project failing. Everyone’s scrambling, blaming each other, the usual Friday afternoon dumpster fire. Suddenly, Shawn stands up. Not yelling, just calm. He lays out exactly what went wrong, step-by-step, and how to fix it in half the time. Jaw. Dropped. Mine, anyway. That was the moment I thought, “This guy? He’s gonna go places.” Started scribbling stuff down whenever he talked shop.
Tracking the Journey
Wasn’t easy keeping tabs. This wasn’t LinkedIn updates, obviously. Just me being nosy over bad coffee:
- Left that hellhole. Jumped ship to a mid-sized company. Saw his name pop up on an internal tech blog post about streamlining their garbage database. The dude rewrote a core process in like, a weekend? Crazy.
- Went silent for a bit. Rumors flew. “Burned out.” “Got fired.” Typical gossip.
- Boom! Next thing I hear, he’s heading a small team at a seriously big player. How? Word was he built some internal tool on his own time that saved them millions. Just built it. No permission, probably. Massive brass ones.
- Kept popping up. Found articles he wrote for niche tech sites. Not bragging, just straight talk about messy real-world problems. Learned more from those than any fancy course.
The Turning Point That Stuck
Fast forward maybe five years. Ran into him at a random tech meetup. Honestly? Looked rough. Tired. We grabbed a beer. He told me flat out: “Climbed high, crashed hard.” Big shot job? Toxic politics. Burnout city. He quit cold turkey. No job lined up. Just walked away. Said he spent months tinkering in his garage, building weird little robotics projects for fun. “Remembered why I got into this mess,” he laughed.
Where the Heck is He Now?
Found out later he did something wildly different. Took all that tech knowledge and… started consulting for non-profits? Yeah, seriously. Helping small charities set up efficient systems for peanuts. No VC money chasing, no silicon valley nonsense. Just pure problem-solving for folks who needed it. Saw a blog post (not his) praising this obscure charity’s new donor system – recognised the clean, efficient coding style instantly. Had to be him.
Rereading those old notes was like flipping through someone else’s movie script. Started as the overlooked guy, became the tech wizard, burned out spectacularly, then quietly reinvented himself doing work that actually matters. No grand plan, just tackling the next problem in front of him, sometimes stumbling hard. That’s the Sutherland story. Messy, unexpected, and kinda beautiful in its own scrappy way. Makes you think about your own path, you know?
