Wow, five years. I can still remember the early days like they were yesterday. Jan 2026 marked my fifth year at Microsoft.
It feels like time has just flown by. One minute I was honored to receive the Microsoft MVP award in 2020 for my work with Big Data Clusters and the next, I was signing my Microsoft offer letter and stepping into a new chapter of my life.
Getting the MVP award in the Data Platform category was a big deal for me. It recognized the community work I poured myself into, blogging, speaking, sharing, helping, all things I genuinely love doing. But deep down, I always wondered what was next. And in early 2021, I made one of the biggest pivots of my career: I gave up my MVP award to embrace a new path at Microsoft itself.
That decision wasn’t easy. It wasn’t just a title — it was identity, community, and hundreds of relationships built over years. But it was also a leap toward growth, and one I would make again in a heartbeat.
My first couple of years at Microsoft were a blur of onboarding, learning, and exploration. I went from being a DBA and focusing on SQL to digging into Power BI, Terraform, Bicep, Azure infrastructure, and now Microsoft Purview.
One thing I’ve come to appreciate more than ever is this: learning never stops.
If I’ve learned one thing over these five years, it’s that career growth isn’t about titles or tenure — it’s about the people who walk the journey with you.
I’m thankful for:
- The mentors, teammates, and leaders at Microsoft who challenged and encouraged me.
- Customers and partners who trusted me with their problems and gave me the chance to make real impact.
- The community of friends from the MVP world and new connections I’ve made along the way.
- My family, especially my wife, whose support made big milestones possible (like finishing my bachelor’s degree in my 40s while working full-time).
Five years gives you perspective. It also reminds you how fast time goes by. And yet, I still feel like I’m just getting started.
There are technologies I want to dive deeper into, perspectives I want to share, and problems I want to help others solve. I still want to teach, still want to speak, still want to learn.
If you’d told me in 2020 that I’d be here today, writing this, celebrating five years at Microsoft, I would have smiled and said, “What a ride.”
And what a ride it has been.