Cisco, EMC, General, VMware

It’s all about change and passion

Bas Raayman

Some of you who read the title of this post will already have a hunch what this is all about. Heraclitus seems to be the person who first stated:

Nothing endures but change.

And I can only agree with that. I remember reading a post from Nick Weaver about an important change in his professional life, and I love this quote:

By taking this position I am intentionally moving myself from the top man on the totem pole to the lowest man on the rung.

And I think that most people who have read Nick’s blog know that this wasn’t entirely the truth, especially when looking what he was able to do until now.

Well, Nick can be assured now. There’s actually on person on the team that is “lower on the rung”. That person would be me.

Time for a change!

I am joining EMC and taking on the role of vSpecialist, or as my new contract says “Technical Consultant VCE”.

I am also going to be leaving my comfort zone and leave a team of people behind that have been great to work with. I have been working at SAP for seven years now, and the choice to leave wasn’t easy. I was lucky enough to have worked with a multitude of technologies in an environment that was high paced and stressful, but very rewarding, and I want to thank all of my colleagues for making the journey interesting! Even so, it’s time for me to make a change.

I was lucky enough to get to know several people who already work in a similar role, and if there’s one thing that distinguishes them in my mind, then it would be the passion they have for their job. This was actually the main reason for me to make the switch to EMC. It’s not about making big bucks, it’s not about being a mindless drone in the Evil Machine Company or drinking the Kool-Aid, it’s about getting a chance to work with people that share a passion and are experts at what they do. It’s about the chance to prove myself and perhaps one day joining their ranks as experts.

So, while I wrap things up here at SAP, if all goes well I will be joining the vSpecialist team on October 1st, and hopefully you will bear with me while I find my way going through this change, and I do hope you drop by every now and then to read some new posts from me.

See you on the other side!

Published by Bas Raayman

24 thoughts on “It’s all about change and passion”

  1. Pingback: Twitted by gklooste

  2. Welcome to the team, Bas! It’s great to have you on board. Let me know if there is anything I can do for you before, during, or after the transition!

    Reply

  7. Bas! Awesome news!

    We are so lucky to gain you as a teammate. You are a fricking Rockstar my friend!

    I will be buying you pints at VMworld Europe to celebrate if I don’t get to see you sooner.

    .nick

    Reply

  11. Bas, I can’t believe it! One of our earliest EMC Proven Professional community adopters, we met for the first time at EMC World, and soon to be an EMC employee. A Big welcome!

    Reply

  13. Congrats!! Hopefully you’ll be in MA for training soon. Although we’ll be gone most of the month of October…
    Very happy for ya! 🙂

    Reply

  20. Hi Bas,
    What a loss for SAP! You will be missed.
    Congrats to you and especially to EMC for the good catch
    Tim

    Reply

  21. Bas, Welcome Aboard! As Nix worte earlier, “Giddy up!”

    Look forward to meeting you.

    Bernie

    Reply

  23. Since I received my MacBook back from a repair I finally found the original post I wrote when I heard that they were going to send me a contract. I just thought I’d post it here in the comments so it wouldn’t be lost. 🙂

    ———–

    Today, I’m using the train to get back from the Linuxtag in Germany. Of course ‘today’ was a couple of days ago by now, but I needed to write this right now, while my feelings where still this overwhelming.

    I got a mail yesterday. It had a very simple sentence in it:

    I would like to have you on the team.

    Which got my heart beating at a slightly faster pace. Just now I got a call stating that all was in order, and that they would send me a draft version of the contract while they finish the last internal things, and this sort of made it sink in.

    I’m starting a new phase in my life!

    And as much as people may think this to be a game that is all about money, prestige and technology, this new phase is something that is so much more to me. It’s about passion! It’s about getting to do what you love, and about trying to find new ways to help people, a lot of the times by using existing technology, some of the time by going entirely new roads. But always with passion about what you are doing.

    I remember the post that Nick Weaver (a.k.a. Lynxbat) wrote about him joining a team of people with hope of finding a new place and new challenges. Perhaps even with fears of not being up to par on what the team he landed in already knew. And with passion, passion about technology, passion about the people around him, and passion about the new challenge that laid ahead.

    Now, when looking at his latest post on what happened at EMC World, I think you can say that he found a place for himself. He upped his game, and I think I can safely say that this is going to be quite the challenge for me. I need to up my game by several notches for this new challenge, but I am passionate, and absolutely thrilled to get a chance to prove myself.

    I want to go the extra mile, and I want to see if this proves to be the place where I can hopefully reach new heights, both for myself, my colleagues, my company and the future customers.

    What I know is that I’m going to a place where a great team of people awaits me, and where I already seem to have made some friends, even before I started there.

    What I am going to do from now on? I’m going to work as a vSpecialist for EMC, or as some would put it, “I’m joining Chad’s army”. And before you go off shaking your head and saying that I drank the KoolAid, stop and think about it for a minute. I can’t assure you that I won’t, but I hope and think that I will be able to stay away from drinking out of that bottle. If not, please confront me with it, because I want to do my best to continue asking tough questions, be it to others or my new future employee. I owe myself that, and I owe that to everyone out there.

    I am absolutely stoked about this, and I hope some of share that excitement with me. So, see you on the flip-side!

    Reply

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