I’m James, a 32-year-old father of three from Watford, UK.
I’ve had many different jobs in my life.
I actually started out trying to make it in a punk band from 17 to 22. I managed to do a national release and press campaign, all while doing admin for a construction company.
But shortly after all that, my girlfriend (now wife) and I found out we were expecting our first child.
So I joined the real world.
I started out as a document controller for a mechanical/electrical contractor.
From there, I moved to do assistant work for the design director on a project for Google’s headquarters in London.
Then I did odd freelance work for companies like Reed Smith Law and Fidelity Finance.
Randomly out of the blue, I got a phone call from a recruiter that asked me if I would be interested in working on a project for Goldman Sachs.
I didn’t think much of it.
I had a few interviews and didn’t hear anything back for a very long time.
Then once again, out of the blue, I got a call telling me they wanted me to join to work on the project.
So I was employed by Xerox to be a contractor doing project coordination for Goldman Sachs on their headquarters, Brexit relocation projects and a few other bits.
While working there, I spent time between their head offices and a WeWork.
It was around this time COVID-19 hit.
At the time, I was working in what’s called a BCP office for them.
This stands for Business Continuity Plan, which means the very second rumbles of COVID-19 started, I was told to work from home.
During this time, we had just started construction on an extension for our house.
As part of these plans, I added a home office, as my current desk setup wasn’t ideal (see the photo below).
Once completed, I started building my home office made up of furniture that I managed to get off the Facebook Marketplace since most places were still closed at this point.
I then got another call from a recruiter for a team working on retrieval robotics.
A tough decision to move on to, but I have always wanted to work in the tech industry.
So I made the decision to move — it is also a hybrid role, which is perfect for me with my kids.
They were very kind with the equipment they provided me with, and as a result, I decided to actually put the effort into building the desk setup I currently have.
The idea around my workspace was literally the word “space”.
I had very little space on my previous desk setups and had to move stuff around constantly.
It never really felt comfortable to me.
I’m 6′3, which while not huge, is big enough to get a backache if I’m working on a normal desk.
I toyed for a while with getting a height-adjustable desk, but I couldn’t find a desk that fit an aesthetic that I actually liked (while being both cost-effective and having the amount of space I was after).
