Fighting a mental writing block
One little story at a time..
Could be laziness, depression, lack of motivation, not enough energy whatever, but for some reasons I haven’t been writing much. As always, I have great ideas in my ever growing notepad, but nothing that rings the bell to actually seat down and produce something.
So today, this article is going to be just that, a stream of words that comes to my mind that hopefully will help me get going writing more.
While walking around the company campus and after almost three years, I decided to stop by the front sign. I heard that in the back was still the actual old logo from the previous company that use to have the HQ in the same place, Sun Microsystems.
Looking at that logo, it reminds me how my own career in tech started, and how this name was synonymous of progress and innovation.
Sun Microsystems used to be one of the leading companies during the internet boom in the 90s. Around 1996 the ISP I used to work for bought their DNS, email and news group servers from them, the famous Sparcs pizza boxes. Honestly, I became fascinated by the esthetics and simplicity of the hardware, and being the curious person I always been, I wanted to learn how it worked.
At that time Solaris was the proprietary OS, although it had some similarities with the UNIX System V -which I was familiar with-, it was still different, so I had to learn this new system. I went to Menlo Park to attend a bunch a certification trainings paid by my generous employer. It was one of my first time in the US and the first time in Silicon Valley. I drove by the same campus where I took this picture and wondered how would it feel to work inside of this company, are people fun to work?, what do they do outside of work?, how their life look like?.
My aspirations weren’t too ambitious at that time. Even if during that trip, I experienced how it felt to be surrounded by technology and progress, the mere idea of wishing to work in one of these companies was inconceivable to me.
Today Sun Microsystems not longer exists, it was acquired by Oracle in 2010. When the HQ campus was vacant, a little company making strides within the social media space moved in and the rest is story.
As to me, I moved to the US around 2007, (this is part of a way longer story, maybe another post?) initially to North Carolina. In 2014 my wife and I decided to move to the Bay Area where we live today. Twenty plus years later, I found myself working off the same campus a younger me didn’t dare to dream, and for a company I wouldn't even think it could be possible to be part of.
