Background

Just before covid started I applied for a new job at a company called Intercept in the Netherlands, I had previously only met one of their employees Wesley Haakman whilst at Ignite in Orlando in 2019 I think it was. I spoke to him asking about what they were up to and then spoke to Holly Lehman and asked her opinion on the company, and by this time I was swaying towards accepting the position offered, after I spoke to Holly I was convinced it was the right move for me.

I joined Intercept later that year on September 1st, 2020. 1 year today.

Intercept isn't like any other company I had worked for before, other companies were good for different reasons, but where I work now is different, more on that later.

During my time here at Intercept I reckon I have worked on at the very least, 26 different projects in the last 12 months using a large variety of Azure services. My background was as a developer, devops, sre and then a development team manager.

Tech

I chose Intercept mainly for my love of Azure and wanting to work on it day to day.

I have worked with the following Azure technologies thus far:-

Azure Networking, Azure Data Factory, Databricks, Event Hubs, Synapse Analytics, App Service, Azure Functions, Container Registry, Virtual Machines, Azure DevOps, Cosmos DB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Azure SQL, Azure Active Directory, Azure AD B2C, Azure Key Vault, Security Centre, Azure Api Management, Azure API for FIHR, Azure Event Grid, Logic Apps, Noification Hubs, Service Bus, Automation, Azure Backup, Azure Lighthouse, Azure Monitor, Azure Policy, Azure Portal, Cloud Shell, Cost Management, Azure CDN, Communication Services, Azure Migrate, Site Recovery, Application Gateway, Azure Bastion, Azure DNS, Azure Firewall, Azure Front Door, ExpressRoute, Load Balancer, Traffic Manager, VPN Gateway, Azure Storage, Azure Data Lake Storage and more.

Workshops

I have presented 15 or more workshops covering Azure DevOps, Github Action, Azure Fundamentals and Cost Management. During covid we have done them all remotely, cannot wait until we deliver them in person at Microsoft offices around Europe - really looking forward to that.

Culture

The culture at Intercept is simply awesome, you'll have to take my word for it, I don't want to go on about it but I thank my lucky stars I work here regularly. We have a lot of fun and have what we call the Intercept Cafe 3 times a week where you can drop in and shoot the breeze with anyone who joins (i love this idea!).

Days off are encouraged, we work flexible hours, everyone speaks English very well (except me of course) and we win as a team, lose as a team, but we mainly kick butt as a team.

Day to Day

Day to day we create designs for customer all around Europe and then we implement the design. We also help customers with improving existing solutions and have teams of people in what we call the continous improvement teams. We only do Azure at Intercept and we work mainly with ISV's (Independent Software Vendors).

Intercept are Hiring

I would never normally write a blog post about work, and mention were hiring, but things are different at Intercept. I went on holiday and had ZERO stress or feeling in my stomach about returning to work and that was a first.

We have colleagues in the Netherlands, England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Germany and South Africa and had a recent colleague join from South America who moved to the Netherlands - we chat, play bingo, play xbox, and more.

Take a look at our vacancies page https://intercept.cloud/en/vacancies/

Other Stuff

This summer I decided to down tools and stop studying for exams, stop blogging, stop recording content and just enjoy the summer, thankfully its been the best summer I can remember. I have enjoyed golfing and still doing my bit in the community helping people but havent been sat at my laptop anywhere near as much as I have in the past.

I was renewed as an MCT and MVP and auditioned for being a trainer on LinkedIn Learning. The training part has been something have been thinking about doing for a while now, finding the time was impossible but not I think I may have decided thats the way I want to go.

I realise I love helping people, and whatever that entails, helping people get a leg up, bevoming MVP's, helping people by mentoring them etc is what I love doing.

Career

People still ask me what I want to do, do I have any career goals? - I can honestly say at this moment I am enjoying life at Intercept. I love working with Azure, I love learning hence why I do so many exams, I have a passion for learning and a passion for helping people which will never leave me. If you're not currently learning something you're going backwards.

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