(Almost) time for something new…

September 1st, 2005. Fresh from school, I got the opportunity to start at RealDolmen (Dolmen, back then). Not just a “welcome, here’s your customer, cya!”-start, but a start where my fresh colleagues and I got a 4 months deep dive from people in the industry. Entirely different from what school taught me, focused “on the job”. 4 months later, I started at my first customer, then the second, third, a project developed in-house, did some TFS customizations, some Windows Azure, …

During these past 7 years, I actually have never looked at a different job. Not once. Call me naïve, but I actually very much liked working at RealDolmen. Of course from time to time a project wasn’t as pleasant as you wanted it to be, but not everything can be rosy all the time, right? I’ve had a lot of opportunities (“Hey, would you mind diving in this Windows Azure thing?” – “Hey, public speaking, is that something you want to do?” – “Writing a book? Cool idea!”), all thanks to an awesome group of managers who really value personal growth in a direction you value yourself, not a direction which the company would value. I wasn’t planning on going away.

Until Hadi Hariri, who I met 4 years ago drinking wodka and beer water on one of those public speaking opportunities, asked me if I would like to join JetBrains as a technical evangelist. I found this a tough question. It was something I had in the back of my mind as “job I would love to do”, but I liked what I was doing at RealDolmen and all the opportunities that I’ve been able to jump on during the past years. I would even dare to say that this new opportunity at JetBrains is part the result of opportunities at RealDolmen in the past. RealDolmen is a great company to work with and I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to go back.

Back to the question. It made my mind go in overdrive. Weighing pro’s and con’s, both at the job level as well as at a practical level (from a local company to an international company, from consultancy to evangelism, from some travel to a lot of travel, …). It meant considering leaving a company which felt (and still feels) like home behind, with colleagues I’ve come to consider friends. After a lot of pondering, I decided that taking this plunge would be the next step. Leaving behind these 7 years still causes mixed feelings. On the other hand an opportunity that checks of a box on your bucket list is one you can’t ignore. Hence…

I’m leaving RealDolmen. I will start working for JetBrains as a technical evangelist starting December 10, 2012.

I’m both excited and nervous about this change as it’s different from what I’ve been doing until now. For starters: my Twitter stream will contain less complaining about traffic. Why? Because my office is where my Internet connection is. At home, at my parents, while traveling, when parked near your house with an open WiFi, …

And then, of course the job itself. Going from “technical consultant”, doing mainly the deep-tech parts in the architectural and project starting phase, I’m now going to “technical evangelist”, sharing technology and knowledge about .NET and PHP with others through various platforms. I’ll be gathering product feedback, doing tutorials, demo, screencasts and a lot of conferences, interacting with the community. I’ve been doing some of these as a “side job” (thank you, RealDolmen, for being able to do all this in the past!) but now it’ll become my main job. Something very, very appealing.

Does this mean I’ll no longer be involved with the Belgian or international community? On the contrary! I’m planning to keep doing the things I do today on Windows Azure and ASP.NET-related technologies and have a chance to renew my focus on PHP as well. They are at the heart of my interest and I’ll keep them there.

So in short… I’m leaving RealDolmen with mixed emotions, changing a great partnership. Thank you for these past 7 years. And let’s go for at least 7 years at JetBrains. I’m confident that this will be a great partnership as well.

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