This is where I leave the Oracle bus

After 10 incredible years at Oracle, I decide to move on and change the tune. Throughout these last years I’ve had various different roles inside the company, lived in two countries, traveled to countless others in all continents, and met so many amazing people while learning the multi-cultural idiosyncrasies of working internationally. I loved celebrating the victories or trying to learn with the defeats while everybody else around me was speaking other language. I started to become strangely comfortable inside rooms, events, meetings, and groups where everybody else was speaking one of the languages I don't master like Turkish, Hebrew, Arabic, Norwegian, Russian, or Estonian. This taught me to read the other communication transmitters like body language.

I came to the conclusion that business is about trust wherever you are in the world. From Saudi Arabia to South Africa, from San Francisco to Helsinki, from Munich to Istanbul, when you look someone in the eyes and establish trust through your actions, this capital becomes your biggest wealth. Some people misinterpret trust with temporary professional "friendship". Trust is a permanent currency, while the relations established in the context of a professional engagement, are temporary. I've always advocated that you need to stay long enough in a role, job or company until you establish a strong trust network. I am very proud of my international network. Full of people from all sorts of background, religion, language and convictions.

I learned a lot and feel very grateful for all the opportunities I had. Constantly leading the development of new products into the market was very challenging and somewhat addictive. The thrill of working in something new every few years without the need to leave the same company, felt like a luxury. Building new teams, developing new groups and communities, and supporting the growth of technologies with the potential to change the world, was truly fulfilling. None of this could be achieved without the teams I worked with and to whom I am forever grateful. I also met some amazing people in the partner network and in the user group community. But probably the most striking learnings came from customers. I had an amazing feeling every time I got a call or text from customers thanking my small contribution to the success of their projects. It's a silent game, no selfies, but full of impact.

Experience taught me that one can only be at the tip of the spear once critical thinking is a mindset and not a temporary measure. This amazing industry has no mercy for steady growth (with some notable exceptions). It has to be hyper growth. There is no room for second best. Once you get used to fuel the rocket, and ride it, you never go back.

Defying the status-quo becomes a state and in my view the only one you can embrace if you want the type of growth that brings impact and probably and most importantly, growth that fuels a positive change, one that reflects in a better world. It seems a contradiction but in fact hyper growth can and should only happen if it's done with the right set of values. Plans may change, but values should remain intact.

“If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.” 

― Woody Allen

One can only achieve high levels of growth, if expectations are exceeded. Constantly. You can't face a market where expectations are being raised every single year, with the same strategies. So you need to be ahead and that is a lonely place to be. Some people don't deal well with the consequences of being a lateral thinker, and can't bear loneliness. That is fine and there is nothing wrong with that. We need plenty of people in plenty of different roles. I've done enough soul searching to realise I'm not that person. I was "lucky" not to be that person at Oracle. So throughout 10 years I was able to be the Exadata guy, then the Engineered Systems guy, then the Enterprise Architecture guy, then the Big Data guy, then the Cloud guy, and finally the Autonomous Data Warehouse guy. If it helps to understand why, one of my role models in life is the late David Bowie :)

Nevertheless you know you need to move on once every corner is crowded, and critical thinking is standing in the way of maintaining the bottom-line growth, while top line growth is neither hyper nor needs lateral thinking skills. And again there is nothing wrong with that, it just means you need to change rooms. Or bus.

So I got up, clicked the red stop button, and left at the next stop. As I step down and watch the big red bus fading into the sunset, I take a long deep breath and grin to myself: "Let’s do this!"