WHAT?!?! I just left Microsoft!

This is my personal story. My story… about following my dreams and the courage to leave an exceptional global company for the unknown. And why?

TO TURN VISION INTO REALITY — CREATE A STARTUP.

My decision to leave Microsoft aroused curiosity amongst my colleagues and counterparts. Lots of questions were thrown in my direction. I did not find difficulty to answer them, but it took awhile to understand the answers, as it didn’t seem a logical decision. It was not about how much I could have earned, how fulfilling my job was, the manager or the company…

It is about having dreams realized, passion and self fulfillment. This story is the stepping stone towards realization. It wasn’t ever a question of IF, it was always a burning question of WHEN — when will I establish my own startup?

When you look at it that way, it’s understandable, not so?

I worked for Microsoft for 3.9 years. Microsoft, is indeed an extraordinary company to work for. In my Farewell Letter, I wrote: “It doesn’t really matter what my title was — I had the opportunity to leverage my creativity and to develop my own way to make an impact on our business”

In such a remarkable, global enterprise, being able to develop new directions for innovation and contribute wholeheartedly to the company’s mission, is no trivial matter. In fact, it was a momentous opportunity.

In my story, Microsoft prepared me for my bold decision. I joined Microsoft as an engineer and left as an entrepreneur.

What prepared me for this decisive moment? It was a combination of the 3 roles I held and the extracurricular activities that were not directly related to those roles. That is, being a Keynote speaker, and my contribution to communities, meetups, webinars and as well being a Hackathon leader.

The move to the Microsoft Azure Sales Organization was a calculated decision. I knew I would be coding less, but I also knew I would be mastering new skills. To keep it brief, here are just a few of the significant development areas I acquired during my Microsoft days:

customers (a lot!), partners, sales cycle, business breadth thinking, partnership & biz dev, planning, vision, and strategy. My solid technology background, my business background and my passion to help companies to build and modernize cloud-native applications made me realize that I am ready for this journey.

Where I come from?

Although my time at Microsoft has contributed greatly to my professional maturity, entrepreneurship was always yearning for me. To understand where I come from, let me jump back to my childhood. I was a curious kid. I liked taking things apart and putting them back together, I enjoyed electronics, Lego and woodwork. Back then I couldn’t put my finger on it, but today I know that innovation is my passion.

In high school, it was clear that entrepreneurship was to be my future. It was then, that I signed up for two programs:1️⃣ 3-year entrepreneurship program with Ness Technology and a 2️⃣ 1-year young entrepreneur program with the Ministry of Education. And guess what? I ended up writing an IP, but that’s a story for another time.

Today I finally take this step!

While Cloud Native is somehow new, DevOps started somewhere in 2007, and today it is nothing similar to what DevOps was before. In both areas that are still very much connected, there is a lot of room for improvement. There are still challenges to solve and many gaps to fill. I’ve seen a lot of customers, many of them adopted the DevOps culture, and built/modernized Cloud Native Application, Containers, and Kubernetes. Surprisingly, most of them faced similar challenges. I will be focusing on clarifying the most painful challenges and gaps and building a great product to makes it better.

And now, I will close with a question…

What do you find the most painful regarding DevOps and Cloud Native? DM me.