It's been a fun ride!

It's been a fun ride!

Yesterday I was informed that my position at Microsoft was eliminated. I have to admit that my feelings are mixed. I have really enjoyed my almost 17 years with Microsoft and really feel grateful for the chance I had to work with some of the greatest minds and colleagues one can hope to have.

Microsoft gave me so many opportunities including relocating to the US and offering a unique experience to my family and I, working at the edge (pun intended) of innovation and technology, growing skillsets that I didn't even know I had and so much more.

Microsoft also taught me what growth mindset is about, that you can adapt and reinvent yourself, take risks, explore new things, fail fast.

And when I say Microsoft, I mean all the talented people I got to work with and I want to thank all my colleagues and managers (still or no longer at Microsoft) who made that experience so rich and enjoyable (I can't thank you all as you are too many, but you know who you are).

Thank you Eric Mittelette for giving me my first job at Microsoft France (on the account that I was the only candidate who came without a tie to interview for a Developer Evangelist job), on this day, you are still my role model for a manager, always fighting for your team and putting us first in every decision.

Thank you Mike Hall for being a real mentor to me all these years, for getting me the job in the US and for being such a good friend (and introducing me to squash).

Thank you Ilya Bukshteyn for allowing me to be the only techy in a marketing org and learn what marketing is about (I still prefer being a pure techy, but I am still using all the things I learned in your team).

Thank you Joe Wilson for making Imagine Cup what it was at the time I got the honor to captain the Embedded competition, travel to Egypt and be humbled by the young talent participating in that unique event, and then becoming my squash buddy (letting me beat you from time to time) and becoming my friend.

Thank you Satya Nadella for turning Microsoft around to become the fantastic company it is today and infusing into me a pride and feeling of belonging that I would never have thought I could have in a big corporation.

Thank you Jean Paoli , Gianugo Rabellino , Jean-Christophe (JC) Cimetiere , and all my MS Open Tech co-alumni for introducing me to the fantastic world of Open Source and for allowing me to be part of the team that paved the way for Microsoft to become the Open Source champion it is today.

Thank you Sam George for giving me an opportunity to join the Azure IoT group at its inception and help me extend my Embedded devices expertise to the world of the Cloud. Thank you for putting your trust in me when it came to storytelling and technical demos for keynotes, analysts briefings, even for sending me last minute in front of Satya and all his leadership team for a Build keynote demo rehearsal to play your role as you were sick ;-)

Thank you Pierre Cauchois for being my "hey real developers do this and need that" reminder. Your partnership and friendship kept me grounded in ways you can't imagine.

Thank you Golnaz Alibeigi , Cameron Tomisser and all the DevRel Studios team for letting me come to your studio (and for inspiring me to setup my home studio during the pandemic) to record the over 350 episodes of the IoT Show , and allow me to participate and host some of the live segments at Build and Ignite.

Thank you Stefan Wick for giving me my first manager job and mentoring me in learning and developing new skills, for letting me create the IoT Blog and the MS IoT Developers Channel and invite the community to contribute exceptionally rich content.

Thank you Benjamin Cabé and Vanessa Villa for being patient with me as I learned these new manager skills (which I still need to work on to master fully :-D) and for being such great teammates.

One of the things I have preferred in all these years, was the chance to work beyond Microsoft, with an extremely vibrant, challenging and talented IoT community, MVPs, partners who made my day to day so fun, kept me grounded in the reality of the business, gave me a hard time challenging Microsoft's decisions and choices and most of all for giving me their trust. I really hope you don't feel I am letting you down here as I still consider myself part of this exceptional community. Maybe I'll become an MVP myself one day, who knows ;-).

?Gosh the trip down memory lane is emotional, and while 17 years seems like a long time, when I try and list all the jobs, experiences I got to live and all the people I got to meet, I just don't know how they all fit in such a short amount of time.

?Now is time for me to take a breath, then figure out what my next adventure will be. It might be at Microsoft doing something else, or it might be somewhere else. What do you think?