I’m super excited to announce the next couple of months I’ll join two amazing companies. They are both passionate about IT, an expert in their field, and on a mission to amplify their AWS partnership. I’ll establish an AWS Tribe in each company, organizing tailored, hands-on training sessions, personal coaching, and navigate the company through the partnership process. This blog is not only about these two gigs I’m super proud of, but also a short story how I’m combining this with a happy family life.
I was creating a shortlist of companies that could benefit from my work as an AWS Tribe Lead. One that quickly rose to the top of the list was Team Rockstars IT. They mobilized a high number of talented people, give them a transparent and fair reward, and awesome gigs with several big brands. I reached out to Erwin Hemmen, the CEO, and within a week we met in Amsterdam. Rockstars recognized the increasing demand for IT professionals with cloud knowledge. In fact they were already working on AWS platforms with many of their clients. Our mission is to get a significant number of individuals experienced, trained and certified, and Rockstars to become a proud AWS Consulting Partner. If you are looking for developers, with deep and broad knowledge of AWS technology, you should definitely invite these AWS Rockstars!
More about Team Rockstars IT.
Synadia was actually one of the first companies that approached to me. Sebastiaan and Remi van Wijngaarden, the two founding brothers of Synadia, invited me for coffee. They shared a lot of interesting projects they are working on, including a story about “Smart Factories”. So far, I wasn’t very interested in manufacturing, IoT or simply programming hardware. But to be honest, Synadia has some pretty cool solutions where they use AWS at its core. Synadia operates on a very specific set of AWS services, where I hope to learn a lot from them too. Their people aim for a breadth and depth AWS knowledge, skills and certifications, and as a company to build a strong partnership with AWS. In both areas I can definitely add some value. Synadia asked me to help them with a challenging training program and to act as a thought leader and navigator in their journey. A journey at an amazingly fast pace. If you are interested in a Smart Factory, or face any slightly related challenges, you should definitely contact Synadia.
Learn more about Synadia.
I started 2020 with the promise not to work many hours as I did for the last 10-20 years. Last summer, our second daughter was born and my partner and I asked ourselves: how could we better organize our work and life. We decided to put our life first and see how we could organize work around it. So we both said goodbye to our previous jobs, to pursue other dreams.
From now on, I work from home 2 days a week. In those days I can really get things done, but I also spend a lot of time with my family. In the morning, between 6 am and 9 am, and in the evening between 5 pm and 8 pm, all my attention goes out to them. (Assuming we all sleep well between 8 pm and 6 am…) Around lunchtime, I go out for a run or workout on my spinning bike. At 1 pm I’m completely recharged to focus on the afternoon tasks. Small breaks throughout the day are ideal to even do some household activities. The challenge remains not to lose focus, and continue “the flow”.
On Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I work in Amsterdam, Amersfoort, or Den Bosch. I start late, working on the train around 9:30, spend the whole day with my friends (aka co-workers or client). Once a week I work in the evenings. Twice is really an exception. On Fridays I take the train very early, to join the Friday Drinks after a day of hard work, or sometimes to start an early weekend.
Weekends are almost free of work. I try to limit work to 2 hours, mainly planning and preparing for the next week. I workout once, read, learn or relax a bit in my home office. But most time is spent with family and friends.
Stay tuned… while there are more announcements coming up soon.
-Martijn
