End Of Chapter One: Leaving Microsoft

Jeff Sandquist, CVP of Developer Relations at Microsoft, once said that “change invigorates the soul”. Working with Jeff’s organization was one of the highlights of my career - collaborating with some of the smartest folks in the industry, shipping things that have an impact (also known as docs.microsoft.com) and being very closely aligned with developer needs.

I’ve been at Microsoft for close to six years, and I always felt like I am never the smartest person in the room - the sheer caliber of individuals that I had the honor of working with speaks volumes for the kinds of organizations that exist within the company. From my early days working with the Channel9 and Coding4Fun folks, to incubating a whole new project in the Office division, then working on Outlook (I helped ship O365 Groups), to then shipping a multitude of experiences on the one technical documentation site for the company - docs.microsoft.com, I woke up every morning looking forward to the challenges and discussions of the day. Microsoft was THE company that opened so many doors for someone that came from a poor Eastern European country - a lot of people believed in what I could do and gave me a chance, and I hope I didn’t disappoint them.

As with every journey, at some point you get comfortable with the position you’re in - you know the people you work with, the projects are moving forward at a velocity you expect them to. That is the point where I firmly believe it’s time to embark on the next stage of the mapped out (or less so) path. For me, that meant that I wanted to push my own growth and skills in a new direction, in an area where I have to actively learn something totally new to me (and then learn some more). Leaving Microsoft was not an easy decision, but one that I wanted to make at this point in my life to really grow. Stepping outside the “nest” is scary, but instead of being afraid, I am excited to meet new people, keep in touch with the folks I worked with and build awesome things together. Change is the catalyst of growth.

What’s next? It’s a bit early to announce in this post, but the next couple of weeks will shed some light on the answer.

As I signed-off in my last email,

“Fearlessly onward (but in a data-driven way)!
Den”