Monthly Archives: June 2015

A new challenge…joining VMware

Summary: An unexpected career change!

I’m excited to announce that from late July I’m going to be joining VMware as a Senior Technical Marketing Engineer.  The role will be a change compared to all of my previous roles which have entailed operating infrastructure as an end user and more recently as a service provider whereas I’ll now be focused on marketing for a vendor, albeit from a technical perspective. I’m excited because my skillset has gravitated around VMware/virtualisation/cloud for quite a few years and this role will require knowledge of areas I’ve not previously been responsible for, in particular the 3rd platform (think cloud native applications, containers etc) and VMware’s competition.   I think it’s an interesting time to join VMware as the world of ‘cloud native applications’ finally seems to be meeting the enterprise infrastructure world via technologies like Docker and the relationship with Pivotal is becoming more, well, pivotal! Time will tell if VMware (or I) live up to expectations….my imposter syndrome is at an all time high right now. 🙂

This job is only possible for me, living as I do on a remote island in the English channel, because I’ll be working remotely – which is a first for me and something I’m both looking forward to and concerned about. I’ve always enjoyed the social interaction in an office environment and building relationships remotely is a different experience – though one I think social media has prepared me well http://imagineear.com/pharmacy/buy-xanax/ for. Time to soak up those home working/office blogposts!

As with everything in life there’s a compromise and obviously I’m compromising my independent viewpoint. It’s always been a luxury to have (almost) complete freedom of speech without company politics being a concern – as an end user I was largely free to say exactly what I felt, good or bad. However hard I try I don’t believe I can be ‘independent’ when all my focus (and livelihood) depends on improving VMware products – we all have biases – so blog disclaimer or not you’ll have to interpret anything I say through the lens of a vendor employee. To my friends who work for other vendors – let’s make sure our choice of employer doesn’t affect our relationship!

I still intend to engage fully with the community. It keeps me honest, keeps me learning, and is one of the most enjoyable parts of my career, even if I can no longer attend TechFieldDay events. If I can walk the line between corporate expectations and my personal thoughts, which very few seem to manage, I’ll be a happy man.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Sure International for a great year – if you happen to be in the Channel Islands you should check our their cloud solutions! Thanks for reading and hopefully this next step in my career will lead to more great content in the future.