Seeping Matter

Yesterday was my last day at Mozy.

I left Novell and came to Mozy just over a year ago.  For a variety of reasons, I chose to leave Novell even though in my case I had to take a cut in pay to do it.  I don’t regret this decision at all.  I’ve learned tremendously from Mozy, met a lot of really great people, and really loved working at Mozy.  It’s a great company with a great product, but the best part about Mozy is the people – there are some really great people there, many of which I didn’t really get to work with as much as I would have liked, and I’ll definitely miss the opportunity to work with them.

At my one year mark last May, I took a step back to look objectively at my job at Mozy.  This happened to coincide quite closely with EMC’s recently announced employee 5% pay cut, which of course also affected then-current Mozy employees.  (By the way, you have to love how EMC told the press that they were “asking” employees to take the cut – it was more like “we’d like to ask you to take this cut in pay, or leave.”)  I looked at the tradeoff I’d made a year earlier, now with greater insight, along with the adjusted compensation, and realized that I wouldn’t have made the decision to come to Mozy last year after all.

It’s an odd conclusion because I still would have made the decision last year, knowing everything I’d learn and the relationships I’d build.

It was at this point that a great colleague from a former team at Novell, one of the two best teams I’ve ever worked on (the other also from Novell), told me that the company he is now with was hiring, and asked if I would be interested.

Truth is, he and I had discussed this exact position about a few months before, and I’d told him at the time that I was happy where I was.  But then EMC changed the dynamics of our employer/employee relationship, and when he approached me again, by this time I was willing to consider a change.  And as my new employer and I considered it, we both came to the conclusion that it would be a good thing.

I’m really looking forward to this new opportunity.  I’ll learn a lot, I hope to contribute a lot, and know for a fact that the team I’ll be on there is outstanding.  At the same time I’ll miss the cool of Mozy.  It’s still a great place with great people.  Especially if you are considering working there now – the 5% cut does not apply to new hires, and I know they are still looking for great engineers among other things.