Turning the page

Today marks my final day at BlackBerry, the final day of a great 8 year journey.

It’s hard to believe that it was 8 years ago when they took a chance on hiring me as a co-op. Even more hard to believe is that they could have gotten rid of me after 4 short months, but they decided to keep me around and start full-time. I’m not sure what they saw in me but I’m glad they did.

When I started at BlackBerry the 8700 was growing in popularity, the cubes were so big I had a good portion of my desk holding 2 old large CRT monitors. Then the little Pearl launched and that changed everything. The company quickly doubled in size, and my cubical quickly shrunk in size. Luckily I was relieved of those huge monitors. By this time you could hardly walk down the street without seeing someone thumbing away at their CrackBerry. Of course over the past few years things have not been as good. However, it was never as bad as any of the news outlets made it sound.

It was great to see how everyone rallied for the BlackBerry 10 launches. I still believe it is a superior OS, but there was already too much brand damage by that point. If more people would have been willing to give it a try, and stick through the small learning curve it could have been a completely different story.

Everyone at BlackBerry has been amazing and that is why this change is so bittersweet. I’m excited for my new opportunity but sad to leave such a great team.

As I walk out the door for the last time I’ll reflect on all the great times, and look forward to all the great times that I will have at D2L.

Thank you BlackBerry for all you have done for me and my family. I’ll always be a BlackBerry fan boy.