New Beginnings….

So it’s been just under a month since my last blog entry and just over 2 months since I left VMware. I was hoping that I would have more time to complete my “Big Bets” series of articles but unfortunately my life hasn’t stopped and I’ve been kept super busy!

Firstly, we had a new addition to the family – my 2nd daughter arrived 2 weeks ago and she’s been keeping us very very busy! It’s only been 3 years since our first child but it’s amazing how quickly the skills come flooding back…. not to mention the memories of sleepless nights as well!!
In a way, my redundancy came as a bit of a blessing as it meant I could be at home to help out my wife during the later stages of her pregnancy, doing school runs for our eldest and also helping with household chores and cooking. I think she was really appreciative that I was able to do that.
It also puts your work-life balance into perspective, I’ve enjoyed hanging around with my eldest daughter and I’m amazed at the little person she’s growing into!

Secondly, even though I haven’t been actively looking for work I’ve surprisingly been quite busy with interviews. I had planned to only start looking for work in April, but when a few opportunities arose to interview with a few well known companies I jumped on them.
It’s been quite a hectic interview process! Everyone was aware of the impending birth, so everything got squeezed into a few weeks…. I was even doing interviews the week of my daughters birth! She was 4 days late and thankfully I managed to complete a number of final interviews before her arrival.

So without further ado…. Who am I joining?!?

Well, as of next week I am proud to announce that I will be joining the CloudHealth family as a Senior Technical Account Manager aligned to strategic channel accounts! Really excited to join CloudHealth, firstly because it’s back with VMware (but still run as a separate team) and secondly it opens up a great opportunity for me to pick up skills in AWS, Azure and GCP!
Throughout my career in IT, I’ve been quick to jump onboard with new technologies as the market changes direction… it happened when Blade technology was coming to the fore (I was certified for every blade vendor out there)… it happened when virtualisation became mainstream (where my love of VMware started)…. it happened when HCI became mainstream (Nutanix, vSAN, EVO:RAIL, VxRail)… and now it’s happening with Cloud! Totally stoked that I have a new challenge ahead of me!

To be honest, it’s been an interesting journey (and a bit ironic given my recent blog post)…. I was aware of roles being advertised within CloudHealth before I left VMware, but as I had no clue into what they did I kind of ignored them! It wasn’t till I stated reading and researching into them for my “Big Bets” blog article that I actually realised they had a fantastic solution and reputation! So when the TAM role appeared on the VMware careers website, I jumped at the chance to apply!
After several interviews I was asked to come back for final rounds the week of my daughters birth. So going with the popular consensus that the second child normally arrives early, I arranged for it to be after my baby’s due date…. little did I know she was too comfortable and would arrive late! That week was pretty stressful – trying to juggle preparing for an interview and presentation whilst also preparing for a birth that could happen at any time!! In the end, I had my final interview on the Thursday afternoon and at 3am Friday morning my wife went into labour…. so I’m a little thankful that my daughter was courteous enough to hold on till my interview was completed. =)

Baby arrived a healthy 8lbs and both mother and baby are doing really well! =)

Then a week later I got the verbal offer on the role!! It’s like the stars seemed to align for once! =)
(God works in mysterious ways!)

 

Anyways, long story short….. I’m back as part of the VMware family, albeit a different part of the business! But that said, totally looking forward to what’s in store for me at CloudHealth…. it’s a great product, with great people, now within a great company!

….. I just now need to make sure I stay for the long term! 😉

 

On a separate note, just picked up a reMarkable tablet and wrote most of this article on it…. the OCR function is pretty amazing! It’s an expensive piece of tech, but quite an interesting one! =)