Next chapter

After over a decade of being a part of the Sitecore organization, I have decided to move on to the next chapter of my professional career.

To say it was a wild ride is an understatement! What started as a first part-time job during last years in university gradually turned into a career that enabled me to have great experiences, move to another country, meet so many outstanding individuals, and most importantly, be a part of the fantastic Sitecore community.

Back in June 2005, during my 4th year in University, I was one of the two lucky students who landed their first job interview with Sitecore Ukraine. Having started part-time, I had no idea what I was doing, for example, didn’t know the difference between CC and BCC (learned that the hard way).

Fortunately, I had great mentors to get my professional career started on the right foot! My most vivid memory is when Alexey Rusakov demoed one of the first builds of Sitecore 5 with the new Sitecore Desktop and Sheer UI. I thought: how in the world this was all possible without the browser plugins… and what is that csc.exe process doing?…

Fast forward to 2006; the second week after I moved to San Francisco, I am on my first gig with Jens Mikkelsen debugging an XSLT rendering for a customer in a server room on the 50th-something floor. I don’t remember, but I don’t think it was a “whack-whack-star” issue lol.

Top 12 reflections of 12 years at Sitecore

If I were to do an introspection of the journey with Sitecore, these would be the highlights:

1. Working alongside with and being mentored by dedicated, passionate and talented Sitecorians with hard work ethic and desire and ability to execute. Being under the wing of John West and Derek Roberti in early Sitecore USA days shaped me into who I am today professionally, and I am immensely grateful for.
2. Having the opportunity of working directly with the customers during my years in Services helped me develop a customer-first perspective before I developed any product development or management skills.
3. Working in different roles (QA, support, engineering and PM) gave me a much better perspective on what it takes to deliver a great product.
4. Travelling a lot for work and being able to experience different parts of the country - from Muncie, IN to Miami, FL gave me an opportunity to witness how vast and diverse US is and fall in love with this country.
5. During gigs, I had the opportunity to develop long-lasting relationships with customers and partners, which were not only the source of inspiration and collaboration but also helped kindle great friendships.
6. Being a part of the amazing Sitecore Community. The value of a thriving community was realized by Sitecore founders quite early, and it is super exciting to see how far it has come!
7. Working within a truly global product delivery organization and doing team development around the clock was really good fun and a worthy experience to have!
8. Every Sitecore Symposium was awesome and always provided me with a good challenge, especially the last event in Las Vegas, where I was invited by Ryan Donovan to be a part of the closing keynote was an exhilarating epic experience and I am really looking forward to attending the upcoming one in Florida, now as a guest.
9. The Sitecore family, camaraderie, and sense of being a part of a single mission fueled by great vision and leadership.
10. The opportunity to work in the ‘skunkworks’ mode and playing with the latest cool tech has been the dream job for me.
11. The honor of leading Team X, which is the extreme R&D arm of Sitecore Product department, featuring such bright individuals and great teammates as Adam Weber, Kam Figy, and Nick Wesselman has been a real blast! Building JSS together has been the most rewarding and super valuable product development experience for me, and I cannot express how much fun it was to work side by side with Adam, Kam & Nick.
12. There has always been something new and revolutionary to look forward to at Sitecore. They say “it’s a great time to be a developer”. I would add that it has never been a better time to be a Sitecore developer!

Where to next

To be candid with you, I’ve always dreamed of starting a company and paddle my own canoe so to speak. Now it’s a perfect time for a reboot, therefore I will be joining two of my Sitecore Fellow Comrades - Lars Petersen and Todd Mitchell to start a boutique agency dedicated to helping Sitecore customers and partners to get the most of the investment and realize the full potential of the Experience Platform.

I am super eager to share more details on this new venture in the upcoming days! Until then, I will see you at SUGCON in Berlin for some good Sitecore Community fun.

Cheers!