Today I said goodbye to many of my coworkers. Many of those were my colleagues for years, some only for couple of months. Many of them because actually real friends. From all of them I learned a lot and together we achieved much more. I was overwhelmed with reactions I got to my farewell email. It is actually just one hour before my account will be disabled and I finished answering and thanking them for all kind words. Some of them made me laugh, some of them cry, but all make me proud, that I was allowed to be part of this team. We have learned together, grown together, made mistakes together and have always made the best of each situation.
Am I sorry to go?
No. Not at all. I will surely miss many of my colleagues, but I am sure we will meet again. In another story. In different relation. At another customer. At another project. In that moment I will be sure, I will have somebody I can count on.
I am not sorry, but I am very excited!
…and how did all come to be?
For several years now, I had a chance to work with many very talented and hardworking engineers. Most of this is thanks to different support contract we had as a bank, from different vendor technologies. I was always intrigued how does technology I am working with actually function in its core. I am sure many engineers will remember me, to ask them hard, deep dive and sometimes also unexpected questions. Funny is, that I did not always get an answer right away. Often they said “Let me check this. I will come back to you”. And they come back with truckload of information.
What intrigued me about those specialists/masters is, that they were able to admit, that they have no straight answer. But no answer did not stop them. It actually made their heart race and you could see it (as their eyes started to flicker 😛 ) that they fell into another dimension. You could also call it parallel universe. They invested their time, tested their resources, checked with their colleagues and all needed to give me an explanation.
Them some years ago, I was troubleshooting very difficult problem on our environment and, as usually, I had one very good support engineer at the other site. We were digging for clues, but what I experienced that time was acceleration, higher state of mind and accelerated thinking. Afterwards I realized, that was actually the same as I saw in the eyes of engineers, when I asked them a tuf question. I looked for more. I was looking for troubles (relation to well known big data platform is only coincidental) and when it came so far, that we could open trouble ticket with vendor, I was in my element again. Asking, digging, correlating and, of course, also learning.
This was the time, when idea about my perfect next step was starting to form. Premier Field Engineer (PFE) is something I wanted to be one day. And if this is going to be Microsoft PFE, this would be perfect.
…and how will this go on?
Today, after I have said farewell to my colleagues and on a brink of a new dawn, I am also asking myself the same question. And I do not know the answer.
I know, that I will first of all have to learn a lot. And a lot, in Microsoft internal measurement means really a lot. A friend, who I met many years ago and has started only few weeks ago in similar position, twitted: “This training is melting my brain”. Let’s see. I should be able to report back in couple of weeks.
I am finishing this monologue only couple of hours before I start my first working day as Microsoft PFE for hybrid and cloud infrastructure.