This is a story about myself, my professional life and the way I connected the dots so far.
How did I choose to work in the IT industry in first place?
I didn’t really make a choice, but I haven’t done the opposite too. When I was a teenager, I was fascinated by everything around computers – hardware, operating systems, games, and it was my favorite hobby. At that time I had no money to buy good hardware, but even just reading about the latest achievements and product versions was exciting.
A few years later when I had to make a choice about my future career it came natural. I was good in math and I got accepted to study “Telecommunications” in the Technical University of Sofia.
The first dot
Two years later during the summer, I decided to apply for a job and I got an offer from a small Bulgarian IT company. That’s where all this started. The great team spirit, the challenging projects, the opportunity I was given to make responsible choices – these were the foundations for my future career.
The second dot
After two incredible years I ended up on a ITIL course sponsored by Hewlett-Packard. This was my first time touching the enterprise machinery and all of its best practices and processes.
I was intrigued by the possibility to work in this field and one day I got a call from the HR department of Hewlett-Packard. I accepted the offer.
The work in HP was very dynamic and demanding – different projects over the next couple of years, from ITSM, thought Network Automation, Cloud Automation and DevOps solutions helped me find my sweet spot.
I found that I was very interested in the Cloud & Automation domain and its ability to influence the whole ecosystem. I worked with some of the greatest experts in this area, got my first hands on customer experience and learned a lot about their pain points and how to address them with modern technologies.
The third dot
Seven years later during a summer vacation with close friends, one of them working at VMware asked me whether I am interested to apply for a new job. I haven’t thought about it and it took me half an year to send him my CV with no expectations that I will get an offer close to my interests or expertise. One day a got a phone call from Alex, a manager in VMware who was looking for people matching my profile.
The first contact is quite important in this situation and Alex did a great job – a few months later after going through the regular interview process, I joined his team in the Cloud Management Business Unit.
The atmosphere in the office was surprising. Some people were taking a break by playing games in the same open space where others were fully dedicated to their work and even missed the eye contact while I was walking around. It was a bit strange, but I enjoyed the atmosphere and soon I got a desk.
The team was a subset of the Engineering Service Organization and it was mainly responsible for the quality testing of the Cloud & Automation products portfolio.
Initially my daily tasks were not what I expected. I used to build solutions in my previous job and now chasing bugs was not working really well to me, but then the change came. I was asked if I want to step into an extended role as a Product Owner for one release and I accepted that challenge. During the next few months, I was working closely with some of the senior architects and product managers to define the core improvements for the next version. It was a nice experience and I saw the product development from a completely new point of view. I touched the balance of taking important decisions and how they impact our customers. Oh customers, yes – they are an integral part of my career so far and I often think about them like a rocket ship, which opens new horizons ahead and widens my skills to the limit. The next couple of years were quite colorful and I spent my time in work between the daily QE tasks, test automation, interaction with customers, troubleshooting and even feature development. Being part of the R&D organization in VMware gave me an early access to the latest technologies before they turn into a global trend, connection to great professionals with all kind of expertise and spread across different roles, and of course the ability to find my optimal place.
For those of you who feel themselves as inventors, VMware might be the right place to find the required support and eventually leave a trace in the IT history.
Where am I headed now?
Recently I joined a new team called Adoption Excellence. The team mission is to be the trusted partner reinforcing our product values and driving the customer success, adoption and consumption to a new level. The daily tasks will spread across various activities like assessments, migrations, onboarding and use case expansion, architecture design, modernization and transformations.
If all of this sounds interesting to you, check out our open position:
Enterprise Quality & Automation, Cloud Management
What’s next?
Though question. I don’t have that answer yet, but I know that if you are open for new challenges – they will find you wherever you are.
