Leaving Microsoft

Next week is my last day ‘at the office’ while working for Microsoft. I’m then taking a few weeks off, returning my badge on the last day of December, and closing the door for one last time.

Now that my journey at Microsoft is coming to an end, I feel it’s fair to share a bit of background and context for my readers. I joined Microsoft after exiting my previous business and having the opportunity to enjoy some time off in 2019. It did well.

About a year ago, I announced that I am joining Microsoft. I joined Western Europe (WE) organization in a team of 12 or so nationalities. You can read my thoughts about the role here.

In late December 2019, I walked into the Finnish Microsoft subsidiary office. I met with many old friends and made new friends in those first weeks. This was my second stint at Microsoft – I worked previously at Microsoft in Ireland and Finland between 2007 and 2009. As such, I had a reference point that I felt I wanted to move forward from.

For most of 2020, I was busy with work, and school, and family. I’m proud of many of the things our team did, and I had the opportunity to work on exciting things – our Build and Ignite sessions, and the local TechDays 2020 event, among others. During summer 2020, I delivered lectures for a local University of Applied Sciences, and I met with many Microsoft partners to discuss their business and share my advice.

While I did enjoy many aspects of the role, I started yearning for something else. I searched internally for different roles, chatted about many of them, but in the end, I realized what I’m searching for is not within Microsoft for me. You have to let go to find something new.

What next?

I’m finalizing my future plans in the next few weeks, and I’ll have more news to share in early January after the holiday season. I’m not trying to tease you, but simply waiting for some paperwork and contracts to complete!

I want to thank everyone I had a chance to work with while at Microsoft – I hope our paths meet again in the future!

(my private email, jussi@roine.fi, continues to work as-is, just like my private number, +358452374849).