Brick by brick

There's been a lot said about the company I work for. A fair amount of it is true. But a number of us are trying to do things differently. We're trying to create a new impression, a new commitment, a new relationship with our customers. And we know that it's going to be hard work (and it already has been). But we're committed to the work and to our customers, and we're doing to do it brick by brick.

It started with a few people. They built core technologies over a three year period. The few people grew to a few hundred people. They built the base network, storage, compute, and database services. We launched the thing in October 2016. It did a few things, but it did them well. We built some more. We acquired some customers and helped them successfully run on our products. A few hundred people became a few thousand people.

Now we're about to complete our second year in the market. Last week, we brought together our best technical field people into one room for a few days. I got to talk to peers from Spain, UK, Australia, India, Singapore, Japan, Sweden, Belgium, France, Brazil, Germany, and more. I heard stories about going the extra mile for customers. Helping them with how to use and maintain complex solutions. Teaching them new technologies and paradigms. Working nights and weekends. Migrating data (sometimes literally by hand). I was blown away. I was energized. We were one globally distributed team on a mission.

So like I said: people have a perception about our company. I'm sure they have their reasons. But if you were able to see the passion of this team - the desire to help and make you succeed - well, I think your perception might change. So we're back to our day-to-day work after a few days together. We're not a unicorn. We're not launching reusable rockets into space. We're not especially flashy, but we're focused. We're building solutions. We're working closely with customers. Brick by brick.