And the winner is… env0!

Hello, all! As you may have seen, I made a job change… Starting today! I left an awesome job as employee number 23-thousand-something at a large company that everyone in the industry was aware of, to start a new adventure as employee number 9 at a tiny startup that not so many people have heard of, yet. That company is env0!

So, what is env0? Great question! “env0 is a self-service layer for your cloud deployments, giving anyone on your team the ability to create and run their own environments in compliance with the policies and controls that you set for them. Take advantage of the power and agility of the cloud while centrally managing everything from your budget to policies, to passwords, tokens, and other secrets. Plus, env0 gives you unique insight into what projects (not just what resources) are using your cloud budget, connecting your spend to the actual business impact.”

My official job title is DevOps Advocate. But, being as it is a startup, I will of course be wearing many hats for a while. I love jobs where I am part of building something up. Part of the vision and strategy discussions. Part of the success or failure. Not just another cog in a huge wheel. So, why did I choose to take the leap into startup land? That should be apparent now, and it was actually a very interesting story. And it all starts with some of the best career advice I can give you.

• Never turn down a conversation.

I was not necessarily looking to leave VMware. I was not averse to it for the right opportunity, either. I’ve gotten some of the best jobs I’ve had out of nowhere when I didn’t realize they were available to me, or even available at all. I just kinda stumbled upon them. And that’s how it started with env0. I owe a huge thank you, and a debt of gratitude to someone in the vCommunity, who I can’t name publicly for… reasons. This person was interviewing with the env0 folks for the job that I now hold. They weren’t super keen on doing the advocacy role, and more wanted a different role. Because of this, they made a recommendation to the env0 folks. That recommendation was to reach out to me.

I was aware that env0 was a thing, I just hadn’t done a ton of research on the product, the company, etc. One day, I get a follow on Twitter from Ohad Maislish, the CEO of env0. I started looking at the company and the product, and really liked what I saw so far. I reached out to Ohad to tell him I liked what they were doing so far. He mentioned the referral and we set up a conversation. I knew pretty much immediately that this was going to be a place I would be happy with during my chat with Ohad. He’s a super personable guy, with a great vision for his company. From there, I had a call with Alex Miller. Alex spent around 8.5 years doing great things for Stackoverflow. After some time off, he got hooked up with Ohad and had the same positive experience I had. It then led him to join env0 as COO. The chat with Alex was great. Learned a lot about how the company was doing, what the goals were, and how I could help coming on. After that, I just had one call left. This final call was with Omry Hay, the CTO. Omry has an excellent handle on the engineering and wants great things with env0. These 3 conversations solidified the feeling I had that this would be a great company to work for. Excellent leadership, a solid product, and a vision and strategy I can not only support right now, but work with them to adjust, change, and execute as we go along. Ohad made it very clear that I was not being hired so they could tell me what to do. I was being hired to tell them what to do. So that’s what I am going to do. I am ready to dive in and do my part to make env0 a huge success. What does that success look like long term? I couldn’t tell you. But I refuse for it to be anything less than a success in anybody’s book. So settle in, kids. It’s time for this rocket ship to take off!

Be on the lookout for more awesome things from env0 and me!