Just landed my dream job

azjag

As the title says I just landed what looks like my dream job. Working as a Sr. Virtualization Engineer for a company that manages public and private clouds for medical companies. I will be part of the team that manages and maintains the infrastructure. I interviewed with them last Monday and a 1 hour meeting turned into almost 2 hours. Received an email Tuesday morning asking for a good time to call. Got a call at 4:30pm with a job offer. The job is 12 miles closer to home, pay is the same, yearly bonus, stock options (never had those before) and significantly better benefits.

My current job was feast or famine as it was a small company that didn't like to buy anything. I missed one day of work last week after turning in my notice and was accused of already working for the new company. My counterpart, who is the network guy, was told to lock out my account and remove my access. They were able to lock my account, but for some strange reason my account keeps showing up in the domain admins group. Gotta love Group Policy. After calling my boss and sorting out the situation I was informed Monday would be my last day. My boss seems to think I am willing to work all weekend to finish up documentation and processes so I can hand them off. Not going to happen, especially since I can't login remotely anymore.

Sent my new job an email letting them know I'm being let go early. Received an email two minutes later saying "Sounds like a plan. We may not have everything ready for you, but we will figure it out." Now I'm spending the weekend brushing up on my vcloud skills. Any recommendations?

Staunchy

Congrats dude and good luck with the new job. It's not always about money, yes it does help but 1st and most importantly you should be enjoying what you do and where you work...

W Stewart

Yeah congrats. Hope you enjoy the new gig.

snadam

Congrats! Sounds like the environment and bennies are an improvement, so the pay staying the same doesn't sound bad at all.

Score one for the Phoenix Crew

coffeeluvr

Congratulations on the new job!!!!

gabypr

Congrats on your new job!!!

coreyb80

Congrats on the new gig and continued success.

cgrimaldo

Congrats and good luck!

Kinet1c

Sounds like an awesome new job, best of luck with it and your VCAP studies.

azjag

Thanks for all your kind words. The trade offs of bonuses, distance to work, distance to pickup my daughter, and stock options made the need for a raise unnecessary. It is weird to say that I make enough to cover my debts, put some in savings and retirement, and live comfortably.

Essendon

Awesome work Jeff! Congratulations mate.

Curious, did the DCA help in any way? Did you or they mention it in the interview?

azjag

I mentioned it at the beginning of the interview when he asked me to list off some of my achievements. I told him about going to VMworld and signing up to take the test the next day because of the low cost. I had intended to take it as a chance to see what the exam was like in order to prepare for taking it again. I told him about the interface and gave generic examples of what needed to be done. When I received the notification that I passed I was blown away. I also mentioned that I intend to take the VCAP-DCD in a few weeks, got moved up to May 17th thanks to VMware's shoddy authorization process, and that I am looking at the VCAP-CIA at VMworld this year. All in all he was impressed with me having the DCA. They wanted "VMware Certified" but didn't list any particulars.

This is the KSA's they were looking for:

Maintain the 100% availability of our public and private VMWare cloud platforms
Develop a forecasting model based off of consumption and capacity thresholds for the Cloud
Develop automated reports and alerting for Availability, Performance and Capacity
Development of a Cloud dashboard based on critical KPI’s
Support Delivery Operations in the deployment of virtualized environments
Assist Sales in the development, design and explanation of customer solutions
Train other areas of Operations and Sales with regards to Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud
Assist in the creation of templates
Assist in the monthly reporting of VSPP

Skills:

VMWare Certified
Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud Management
vSphere
vCloud Director
SRM (or other replication)
OVF ingestion
Template creation
Template management
ESXi Upgrades
Capacity management
Reporting automation
QOS management
ITIL Foundation Certified a plus
Managing multi-tenant environments a plus
Experience in forecasting and establishing KPI goals and thresholds
Willingness to learn beyond the VMWare stack and a willingness to troubleshoot issues beyond Virtualization
Excellent verbal and written communication skills
Ability to switch from task to task as needed
Excellent service skills, as we are a services company – focused on service!
Must be willing to work in a 24/7 environment

Essendon

Thanks mate! Good luck with the DCD, lemme know if you need any help with it.

azjag

You are already helping me with all the links and study materials you referenced in your post.