Onward and Upward

I first wanted to reach out to my readers and extend an apology for not writing recently.  Once you've read through this post, you'll hopefully understand the reasons as to why.

Life is a book, and in every book there are chapters. Sometimes the lines between those chapters are a bit blurry, and sometimes they are abrupt stops and starts.  In the analogy of life, I suppose you could chapter certain things, such as milestones or firsts, or turning points that steered one's life in a certain direction.  Remember those "choose your path" books?

Well, I'm turning over to a new chapter.

This morning, I am tendering my resignation to my employer, IPC - The Hospitalist Company.  I'd like to state here that my time (~5 years) with them has been superb. I was given an incredible amount of leash to experiment and learn, and was able to work amongst a great team.  I was given wonderful examples of leadership, for better or worse, and have learned much about working for large public enterprises in the IT space.  Hopefully I was able to provide that same level of leadership and example to my peers coming up in IT. 

I've honestly been writing this post for about two weeks now, never knowing exactly what to say.  When you work for someone this long, they become family. It becomes comfortable.  And whether you are working like a well-oiled machine, or at each others' throats over the latest "issue," at the end of the day you all work together to resolution and move on from it.  My time at IPC has been exactly this.  We all have our ways, and we learned to work together through those ways.  It's what makes a team a team.

To my peers, my superiors, and the IPC Executive team, I only have two words:  Thank you.

To Ren, you've been a wonderful teammate, partner-in-crime, and have become a close friend.  You were always patient with me, and together, we grew the enterprise into what it is today.  Take care of our baby.

"Yes, Nick, enough with the pleasantries! Where are you going?!"

In life, we're often thrown opportunities that we either grab on for dear life and hold on for the ride, or allow them to whiz past us.  Over the past 6 months, there have been many offers thrown my way, most of them not worth the time, some of them significant.  I always knew in the back of my mind who I wanted to work for, however.  And I suppose subconsciously I was holding out, even with them, for the exact position that was...well, not so much perfect for ME, but perfect fitment of me for THEM. 

It finally came.

I will be joining the NetApp team in RTP as a Virtualization Solutions Architect.

I'm excited about the opportunity to take my hard-nosed opinions of a customer, and directly put some influence into the product design.  I'm proud to be wearing the NetApp badge on my sleeve (or polo) and representing them anywhere I go.  I'm extremely grateful to them for the opportunity, and yet humbled by the wisdom of the people I will now be working with. 

To those of you in RTP, I'm looking forward to finally meeting and collaborating with all of you.

To Vaughn:  Thank you for your patience, your candor, your persistance, and most of all, your support.

As far as this blog goes, that remains to be determined.