First Shipments of Knacki Snacks - 12/30/2025.
About Last Resort Services Inc.
The story of Last Resort Services Inc. is a quiet one. The business itself was formed out of need. The life of a road warior was changing in the early 2000s. Until then, when I was making a living as a consultant, I worked as an individual and I was paid "T&E". T&E meant time and expenses. I kept track of my time and documented my expenses. I got a check for my time and a check for my expenses. Tax time was easy. Time is what paid taxes on and expenses were passed on to the client and he took the deductions. All of that changed when the world of consulting turned to an "all-inclusive" method of billing.
To solve a number of problems endemic in the current changes raging through Corporate America at the time. I formed a corporation, and Last Resort Services Inc. was born.
For a number of years everything was good and then.... the Pandemic, a niece, abandoned by her husband, with early onset of Alzheimer's disease, my Mom's failing health as she turned 92, and my diagnosis and radiation treatment for cancer, conspired to keep me from working fulltime in IT since 2020. It was evident as I began look around for work mid-2024 that things had changed. I still had a marketable skillset. I had 30 plus years of work experience as a software developer, technical lead, business analyst and systems analyst. I had dozens of successful projects on may resume. And .... I was a 65 year old man having trouble finding work for the first time in my life.
Time To Do Something Else
This is not a tragic story. This is a story of re-invention. 2025 was upon me and I had not found meaningful work. I had never spent more than 30 days on the bench when I set out to find work. As the weeks turned into months I did not land one initial interview. It was time to do something else.
I took a couple of days and reflected on what was happening. I determined I must not be presenting as a good fit for the jobs for which I was applying. After going through various listings I had applied to I came across a very telling consistent pattern. Every job was looking for someone with a depth of knowledge in various discipline and skillsets but all of the jobs considered 3-5 years as sufficient to be considered expert. In skills like SQL development and database design, I have 20 plus years experience. But I liked being in the trenches. I liked making new things. I liked investigating difficult problems and working on my own or as part a team to come up with a solution.
A few days later I got a call from a close friend telling me he had just lost his job as head of a Business Intelligence platform and asking my opinion on various paths forward. He did not need advice so much as I think he sought reassurance on his decisions. My friend and I had met while working on a project in 2009. He was new, I was the seasoned professional and 20+ years older than he. After a few minutes discussing various things including the kinds of jobs he was looking into, we exchanged queries concerning our families and ended the conversation. It was while considering the contents of our conversation I realized I was the last independent project consultant in my circle of colleagues. Everyone I knew had either gone into management as a full-time employee for a company.... or they were dead. That was a sobering realization. I had aged out.
In my professional life I had managed numerous teams small and large. This was because, if the project was large and I was brought in as lead, a certain amount of management was entailed. Sometimes the project were small and the company did not see the need for a project manager until they realized there was no one on their staff engaged in doing all those things required to keep a development team moving forward. I take ownership of anything I do. In the absense of a project manager, I would fill that role in addition to my normal tasks. Usually it was not hard to do as I was also likely to be the oldest member of any team. You would be surprised how often that was all it took for me to be accepted in the role. That said, I determined I did not want to "go into management". I especially did not want to be a manager in someone else's organization. As a project manager, I knew eventually the project would end. Any personal, organizational, or political challenges I experienced filling a management role would end. There was "always light at the end of the tunnel". Filling that role as my primary function was not the path I wanted to take. If I could not be the guy making the stuff for someone else, I would make stuff for myself.
