Are you a leader or a follower?
To be honest, I don’t want either one, and I spent a lot of my IT career being neither.
I wanted to be the subject matter expert. The guy you call when you need it fixed. Then, like Man with No Name, ride off into the sunset. It was a good career choice, as I ascended to contractor status, allegiance to no one, dressed in my khakis and polo shirt. If it was broken, for a small fee, I would come fix it.
Ready for your back office server room, with my padded CD folio, filled with code, and my magic laptop already loaded with a virtualized version of your network environment. I’m not there to mess around. You paid me good money, and this cowboy is going to ride in, and gun down your villains.
The town saved, I would pack up my tools and make the next flight out of town, onto the next data villain menacing another town.
Having distilled my career into a trope, I hung up my codex and frequent flyer miles. Today, I am a retired gunslinger, now with aim shaky by aging eyes.
I never led and I never followed. That is probably for the best. It isn’t my personality to be either. Today, I’ll keep my feet up on the hitching rail, and maybe I’ll be coaxed out of retirement to battle another day. But that is a different movie.
Remain Lost 
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