How I got into Red Hat, Part 6
After the earthquake things moved pretty quickly. I accepted the offer and gave my notice. On my last day all my coworkers took me out for a goodbye lunch at Olive Garden. I never had a goodbye lunch but I’ve been to plenty of them over the years. It was a bit of an out of body experience knowing that I wasn’t going to see them every week any more. As I wondered about that, I heard singing and clapping and it was growing closer. Before they said goodbye, my coworkers had told the restaurant it was my birthday as a little bit of a prank. I thought it would be embarrassing with everyone singing for me but oddly it wasn’t. I smiled, blew out the candles, and enjoyed my slice of cake.
I got hired into Red Hat’s Professional Services as a Sr. Consultant. My first day at Red Hat was surreal. I drove the same way to work as I did the week before as if nothing changed. When I got to the building and pulled into the other parking lot, the one beside my old job, it didn’t seem real. Now instead of looking out the window at where I wanted to go, I was looking at the place I came from that got me here.
I was excited to meet my new coworkers! I met my new boss, staked out a desk, and went out to lunch with new people. For two years I had looked out the window at this building and dreamed. Now I was here. I couldn’t wait to start my new adventures and it wasn’t long before I was off to orientation in Raleigh North Carolina.
When I started, Red Hat still had offices at the N. C. State campus. We did normal orientation stuff like paperwork but we also learned some of the history of the company. How Red Hat launched its IPO on selling CDs and T-Shirts. Or how it grew to defy expectations by being the first Open Source company to break a billion dollars in revenue. Michael Tiemann came and spoke to us about the importance of Open Source. And finally, we got our Red Hats. Every new hire gets an actual red fedora, we all have one. Some people keep it at their desk, some keep it at home, and some people even wear it to work. I keep mine on my coat rack.
You actually can’t avoid wearing it, at least once. I certainly didn’t leave room in my luggage for it and I wasn’t alone. After the last day there was a small group of people in Raleigh airport wearing their new hats home. When I think back to that moment, I think about how many other Red Hatters came up to me and said “Welcome to Red Hat” that day in the airport. It made me feel a part of something special. Maybe thats why I do the same whenever I see new hires wearing their hats in the Raleigh airport.
