Reflecting on Three Years at Google

January 16th is my Googleversary! ??

This photo was taken on January 16th, 2018—I was attending Noogler orientation at Google’s Mountain View, California office.

It’s been an incredible few years at Google Cloud. I’m incredibly grateful to be working at Google’s fastest growing business—Google Cloud. It’s the people, culture, technology, collaboration, innovation, customers, sustainability, philanthropy, and fun that make it one of the best places to work. I would have never thought 2020 would be consumed by a pandemic along with social and economic despair, division, fear, hate, and uncertainty. With everything going on in the world, I am even more grateful to be working with some of the smartest people and thankful to have a supportive family, caring friends, and a professional network of colleagues and industry peers—thank you! I’m optimistic for the future—we will overcome the pandemic, we will be united again, we will be kind to others and to our planet. We need to be, we must.

[This VPC Service Controls demo was fun!]

I’ve learned a lot over the last few years—I’ve failed and I’ve succeeded. I’ve faced interesting and complex challenges including technical, cultural, collaborative, and strategic—all in the pursuit to digitally transform for the future. I've been fortunate enough to partner with an incredible hedge fund—a financial services company that is data driven and on the bleeding edge when it comes to the latest and greatest advances in distributed computing. The collaboration, accomplishments, and milestones achieved together throughout their Google Cloud adoption journey is truly phenomenal and rewarding. Formally, I am their Technical Account Manager, but more than that I am their customer success champion, their trusted advisor, their internal megaphone back to Google—my number one objective is to do what is best for the customer, always. I do what is necessary to meet customer requirements. In turn, the customer constantly pushes us to do better, to be better—feedback is a gift. This is what defines a great partnership—listening, executing, trust, and feedback.

One key thing I’ve learned is that uncertain and uncomfortable situations present unique and often unseen opportunities. Change can be (will be!) scary and challenging, but it’s also where you push yourself to grow, to be better. Seek those uncomfortable situations, put yourself out there and grow, you’ll thank yourself later. If you need or want to make a change and are having a difficult time committing to doing it or need some motivation, check out “Who Moved My Cheese?”[1][2]. Don’t be like Hem, rather be like Haw—find and move to the new cheese! It sounds silly if you judge the book by it’s cover, but it provides a very important and simple metaphor that’s inspiring and motivating. I needed to make an important yet difficult career change a few years ago and this book helped me make that change, it was a great decision and I wouldn’t be where I am today if I didn’t commit to changing, if I didn't push myself to be uncomfortable. You can do it, you will do it—be confident in yourself!

For what's to come in the future, no one will know for sure—it's safe to say that "cloud" is here to stay. The sudden urgency to shift to distributed remote work has been the catalyst firms needed to commit to digitally transforming for the future. COVID-19 forced us to re-think how we work—resources like Google Workspace put people at the center, so that even teams who have never met in person can feel like they’re in the same room.

I can’t wait to see how the rest of this journey unfolds. To many more years at Google Cloud!

I wish everyone a happy and healthy new year!

[1 - Book] https://g.co/kgs/xLbC4T

[2 - Video] https://youtu.be/jOUeHPS8A8g

#GoogleCloud #Google #Alphabet #Cloud