They say that smell is the sense that’s most tied to memory but I personally would debate that. I do have flashbacks when I smell things from my past, but nothing like music! I hear a song, or a set of lyrics and my mind races back to those days. It’s in my soul and I’ll never be able to fight it. Funny part is I’m not even tied to a specific genre. I love hip hop, rock, classical, classic rock, and even country.
So why would I start this post talking about music?
Well let me tell you I’ve had quite the journey and feel like a great set of lyrics illustrate what I mean. I know I’ll lose a lot of you by choosing a country lyric but here ya go.
For every stoplight I didn’t make
Every chance I did or I didn’t take
All the nights I went too far
All the girls that broke my heart
All the doors that I had to close
All the things I knew but I didn’t know
Thank God for all I missed
Cause it led me here to this
I’ve always said “No Regrets” it’s how I’ve lived life and no matter where life got hard it always leads me to this!
Now with the long winded intro out of the way here’s what it all means. Remember the good ole’ days of Motorcloud? Well the old crew is getting back together. That’s right I’m going to be joining forces with Jay Marshall yet again and this time we’re going to take it to the next level on Google Cloud Platform.
This coming week will be a new chapter of my professional life that I can’t fully believe. I started in IT in 2000 and was one of those people who clearly had an aptitude but one thing that made me the most successful in this industry was the ability to find answers. More often than not, I didn’t know the answer but I knew how to quickly find the answer. Surprise most of the time that was using this cool new search engine called Google!
I remember introducing it to every single person I ran into (IT or not). I’d often say why are you still using “insert search engine), haven’t you tried Google yet? It felt much like a hidden gem that I got to personally blow people’s minds with…
Fast forward to 2017 where I have a vast experience with Whirlpool as a global IT organization, through VMware a massive IT force, and even the last 6 months with an IT startup out of San Francisco. Now as I look back it’s all been leading to something that I’m both humbled and excited for. Starting May 8th I will officially be a Google employee! I’ll get to work on some of the most innovative technologies and help customers with real world scale problems. My role will be focused on Google Cloud Platform, and I’ll be helping drive IaaS, PaaS, and data changes to enterprises throughout Michigan (and beyond)!
My journey to get into the innovation leader that is Google is one I can’t fully communicate but one thing I hope to do is get it documented for anyone else who may follow my path. Obviously my posts may reduce a bit as I get up to speed but stay tuned for some of the great updates and news coming from this blog and myself.
Additionally I’ll put this out to those of you who are still VMware or Apcera focused and would like to document your work. I’d happily invite you to join and post here on extendingclouds anytime if you want to give back like I have over the last few years. Send me a note and we’ll get it worked out.
2 comments
Congratulations Gary!
Congratulations!