Moving on

I made the decision recently to leave Malwarebytes and move onto a career at Cisco. My time at Malwarebytes was invaluable -- starting when there were maybe 50 employees, today there are more than 800. And today, the company continues to grow.

As I move onto my new job, I've been reflecting on all my accomplishments at Malwarebytes; from being the only web developer at the company, to growing into a team of 9 developers & QA, pushing out platforms, a/b tests, hyper-growth and marketing initiatives, and more. What an amazing journey.

Back in 2013, I joined Malwarebytes a year after applying. Apparently, whoever they hired before me didn't work out or something, who knows, but regardless...somehow they pulled my name out of a hat and I got the job.

It started out as a simple job of managing a small set of static web pages and a couple wordpress sites - not too bad. But over time, the responsibilities grew exponentially.

The job started off in marketing, not engineering. Just me, a designer, a content writer, and a marketing director. Together, we introduced A/B testing and growth-hacking to the business, drove all SEM, email, and other marketing campaigns. We handled all branding and design - from logos to boxes.

As the company grew, and designers came and went, I would often take over for design. I designed tradeshow booths, datasheets, worked on box designs, designed business cards, all while simultaneously running all web initiatives.

I have fond memories of Marcin, the CEO, being heavily involved in my work early on. His office was behind my desk, and I remember him often pulling up a chair next to my desk and discussing user experience with me, helping me understand our audience and what we want to do as a company, and being an encouraging figure throughout my tenure.

Years into the job, as I began to grow my team and the demand for engineering resources grew, we moved to the engineering organization, and my team grew from there. My role eventually evolved into me running and implementing all a/b tests, web analytics, and web platform engineering over time.

Over the course of my tenure, I grew a team of talented people into a web-engineering organization. And what an amazing group of people they are. Nino, Winnie, Sean, Olga, Michelle, Josh, JHB, Jessica, and Dmitriy.

This group of extremely talented, diverse, amazing individuals ultimately made coming into work every day worth the 1+ hour long commute. Together, we created a culture of collaboration, camaraderie, efficiency, and quality, that would often bubble over and impact the people we work with.

I can't tell you how many times I've been pulled aside to be told how someone from my team helped them, or how much a pleasure it is working with the people on my team. Nothing prides me more as a manager.

I will never forget our show & tells, where we would share tools, vscode plugins, chrome extensions, technologies, frameworks, projects, etc., with each other. Or our potlucks, where everyone would bring something from their homes, often representing their cultural background. I was usually the bartender; I blame my Irish heritage.

Or our lunch-and-learns where we'd watch a VueJS course or do a crash course on Teraform. And our countless birthday, new hire, launch celebration, just-because lunch outings which ultimately led to "extremely productive afternoons".

My old boss told me before that it's not the job titles and salary, but the connections we make that are truly valuable in our career journey. I know for certain this is true -- and I am so, so thankful to have worked with the countless people I have at Malwarebytes.

As I say goodbye to Malwarebytes as my employer, it is a very bitter sweet feeling leaving my team behind and moving forward to something new. I am both sad and excited, but most of all, optimistic.

I am thrilled to be working at Cisco and am excited for all the amazing things I'll be doing with a whole new group of talented individuals. I cannot wait to see what's in store.