It’s official. My last day as an eBay employee was Friday, June 8th. My first day as a Workday employee is Thursday, June 14th.
This is the first time I switched jobs for a strategic purpose vs. disliking the company. As a whole, the team I worked with at eBay was great. The North Campus where I sat most of my eBay life is beautiful. The work was fun and rewarding, especially during the “crunch” times.
I grew a lot during my tenure at eBay. Silvafug, free Flex training and 360|Flex were all hatched during that time. Heck, eBay even hosted the first 360|Flex conference!
If it was all so great, why leave?
One thing is size. I’ve been in corporate life for quite sometime now. I miss the days of knowing most, if not all, of a company’s employees. Knowing a team of 20 at eBay was nice, but was a drop in the bucket in number of total employees. At Workday, knowing 20 would be roughly 1/5 or 1/6 of the company.
Another thing is the amount of customers I can impact. At eBay, my direct customers were the various internal users of my apps. Indirectly, one could say that all the eBay buyers and sellers were my customers too, but I never felt that vibe. At Workday, I’ll be joining the UI team and will directly serve Workday’s customer base. I can help make the lives of these people more simple, fun and efficient. As the numbers of customers grow at Workday, so will the number of people I help. After serving a few hundred customers directly with 360|Flex, I found that serving large numbers of customers directly is something I enjoy.
I’ll be moving out to Walnut Creek for my new job. It has a slower pace feel to it than San Jose does. It also has a ton of restaurants that I can’t wait to try!
Adios, eBay: It’s been a blast!
Hola, Workday: Let’s make amazing things happen!
Tom's Blog 
Congrats Tom,
I understand your feelings about working for a HUGE company.
Best wishes in your new position at Workday!
DW
Sounds exciting. Workday is lucky to have you. All the best on the move and the new job.
Hey Tom, you’ll love it here. Dave Duffield is such a honest and considerate CEO to work for, and the core of the Workday app is so fundamentally simple and different from other enterprise apps out there that its just brilliant. I sit right down the hall from the UI group.
@Dan and @Tom Thanks for the well wishes. While it was a bit odd when I left eBay, I know that I’m gonna quickly fall back into my “start-up” self. Tomorrow is the first day and I can’t wait!
@David Thanks for the warm welcome. I am looking forward to working with the whole Workday staff, not just Dave. However, after 12 years of working professionally, you get to see the wide spectrum of bosses. Unfortunately, the only one I’ve never seen/experienced is the kind that Dave seems to be. Come stop by and say hi to the newbie tomorrow! =)