I recently finished my first year at Databricks, so I wanted to take a chance to reflect on the year; summarize what I’ve learned, see if the reasons I joined have proven valid, and check in on how I’m progressing on the goals I set for myself. If you haven’t yet read the blog post on why I decided to join Databricks, you might benefit by referencing that. How Has My First Year At Databricks Been? I’m generally very happy here and think I made a good decision to join. I am truly living up to my LinkedIn tagline of “having fun doing hard things with great people”. I’ve had a lot of fun, but it has also been very challenging, in the way I enjoy – the way that stretches me to be better. In some ways I got really lucky joining when I did, much like I got

Last month I accepted a role at Databricks. I’m writing this post explaining my decision mostly for me to look back on and hold myself accountable to, but perhaps it will also help anyone else going through a similar decision. I’ve decided to be candid about the decision as that is the only way this post will be helpful for others. I suspect the ideas will be relevant for multiple groups of people: those in the exact situation (deciding between Google and Databricks), those in similar situations (people considering Databricks or people deciding between another large tech company and a smaller tech company), and even those people making general career decisions. I mainly want this current blog post to be about Databricks and the reasons behind my deciding to join them, but it is impossible to consider that decision completely in a vacuum. Every decision represents passing by some other