A few years ago, I once had a few managers who made quite an impression on me… each of them pushed me to learn as much as I could about my given profession. Each of them had a personal guideline that really stuck with me. One’s was to “learn two new things a day”, while the other’s was to “improve yourself at every opportunity”.

To this day, I still strive to learn as much as I can about the different facets of my profession. As time permits I enjoy asking my peers questions regarding the plethora of Operating Systems we use here at SoftLayer. Needless to say, there’s a limitless amount of knowledge here to learn.

Additionally, we have such resources as the local Wiki (er, SLiki – sorry Brad) where we can find almost any answer to any question we can fathom. Between the Wiki, the brain trust here at the NOC, and the wondrous internet, there’s no shortage of resources to get the answers to the questions that baffle me.

Lucky for you, the customer, we have our Knowledge Layer, in which our team takes their knowledge, and passes it on to you, so that you, too, can benefit and quite possibly learn two new things a day.

Now, of course, I sit around and ponder - Two things per day? Why would he have set his bar so low?

After separating from the military about a year ago, I was sure I was in for a bit of a culture shock. As you may very well know, the military is very different from life in what we liked to call the “real world”. 24 hour duties, life on ship, the awful food, I was ready for a slight change of pace. Soon thereafter I stumbled upon a golden opportunity here at SoftLayer.

Little did I realize at the time that I would be on board with one of the fastest growing and most innovative companies in the industry. Looking back, I can see that one of the ingredients for our explosive growth is the culture that SL has… one as idiosyncratic as the military itself. Coincidently, the culture shock I prepared myself for seemed to be more of a shift in verbiage.

Allow to me to submit a few specifics:

• Much like the Marine Corps loved to add “MC” before every single acronym, SoftLayer does much the same… (SLiki, SLales – you get the point).
• There is a mindset here that the mission comes first. In this case, that mission is to provide our customers with the best possible hardware, support, and applications to accomplish THEIR mission.
• The pride SL employees have of being part of the team is infectious, much like a close knit unit in the military. You can see this best when things go awry – fellow SL’ers rush to back up those in need. If you’ve read through the InnerLayer prior to reading my musings, you know that the team here takes great pride in being a part of SL’s success.
• Much like the military, you’ve got your large mix of people, from all walks of life, each with something to add to the team. Those experiences conglomerate to further enhance our ability to innovate.

Needless to say, the things that made successful units and deployments while I was in, I now realize are the ingredients to a successful team anywhere, no matter whether you use MC or SL. I guess that culture shock I had prepared myself for wasn’t as bad or painful as I thought it would be. I’ve traded my rifle for a scan gun, and my camouflage uniforms for those SL Tees.