It was never skill. It was the queue.

I built my own website, and I keep thinking about what that would have taken at the bank.

I am not a developer. I ran HR for the people who were.

I was Head of Technology HR at Credit Suisse, then technology reward at UBS during the integration. My job was the people, not the build. I knew what a developer cost, because I ran the reward for them. I knew whether the one you needed existed in the organisation at all, because I had run workforce planning for that population.

So I was in a lot of conversations that started with somebody wanting something built.

Almost nobody ever said no. It went into a queue.

That was the real answer to most requests. Not no, and not too expensive. A queue, a business case, a conversation about priority against eleven other things, and by the time it came round the person who asked had moved on or stopped caring.

I assumed the constraint was skill. I did not have it, so I could not have the thing.

It was never skill. It was access to the people who had it.

It took me until this year to see that, and only because the constraint moved. I sat down with a tool and built the site myself. Badly at first, then not badly.

What unsettled me is not that I could do it. It is that I spent sixteen years in banking where I could not, and I never once named the queue as the problem.

If you are weighing leaving, this is worth half an hour.

Write down the last five things you wanted and did not do because you would have had to raise a request for them. Not the things you could not afford. The things you could not get to.

Then mark which ones somebody with no team could do now.

Mine came back four out of five. I was not expecting that, and it changed what I thought I was giving up.

If your list surprises you too, the next question is what you would actually build with what you already know. That is what this is for, and it is free.