During my technical career, I’ve changed companies several times. I even worked as an independent contractor for three years. One thing I have never done before was switch departments and roles within one company. That’s about to change in a couple of weeks as I move from Simple Talk Editor and DevOps Advocate in Marketing to Customer Success Engineer which is part of Sales. Like any job change, I’ve also planned a buffer week when I’ll be taking a few days off.

Many people have asked why I would want to give up this dream job (hmmm, reminds me of when I left pharmacy to work in technology). Well, for one thing, I’m not leaving Redgate. It’s the best company I’ve ever worked for and, hopefully, the last.

The answer might have something to do with The Great Resignation, and, of course, tech people do change often. I just want to do something different, and the CSE job sounds like I would enjoy it. I’ve missed working with customers, and this will give me a chance to focus on Redgate’s products.

One thing I didn’t think about was how difficult it is to change jobs within a company. When leaving a job, you just put in a notice and leave when it’s time. In this case, since I’m staying at the same company, I’m aware of how replacing my responsibilities is going. I’ve worked hard on Simple Talk over the past four and a half years, and I want that success to continue. It’s not easy to let go, but I also can’t do both jobs. Moving to the new role does feel similar to a move to a new company, but harder.

One of my responsibilities has been writing an editorial for the Database Weekly newsletter every three weeks or so. This is my last one, so I hope you have enjoyed learning a bit about SQL Server from me. I’m moving on, but I won’t be far.