There was some, oh, let's have another company meeting kind of thing.
And I complained to someone going, cause I'm not a meeting person. Like, Oh God,
another company meeting.
It is just, you know, "Hey,
there's an All Hands all of a sudden come and show up".
Whoever it was I was talking to was in the know. And was like, "No, no, no,
you want to be on this one." I'm like, okay.
Something was going on, but I didn't have any idea what.
I initially thought potentially we were getting bought and I got kind of
nervous, but it was during one of the All Hands meetings.
When we got to hear about it directly from, from Sam. And Sam dropped the bomb.
A Cloud Guru joining together with Linux Academy.
It was just unexpected. Completely out of the blue.
I definitely had a bit of a chuckle. In the past we had talked about playfully.
You know, that sort of a thing. This news was just huge, like shocking.
So I was working from home whenever the news broke, um,
which is probably a good thing because I said a few words that may have gotten
me fired. When Sam walked through the door, we were all very surprised.
No one had any idea that that was going to happen. And it was just this big,
like bombshell moment.
I got in five minutes late,
and I went around and I came in through the kitchen and I was sneaking my way
in, right in the tail end of the announcement. And everyone was like,
had these serious expressions on their face. And I was like, what did I miss?
How I felt about it was just really amazed. Right. Um, I mean,
Linux Academy was, was our biggest rival. I was part of the,
uh, the war room team the day that they announced it.
So at, at almost as soon as I walked in the door,
I got pulled into a conference room that I didn't leave until five o'clock that
day. I got genuinely excited because A Cloud Guru and Linux Academy,
are the two strongest organizations for technical education,
the cloud computing, Linux, DevOps, security,
and I immediately felt that it would be the best and the strongest
offering in the world.
I was just curious to see what the direction would be and what was in store for
our LA teams, the company, and myself as well.
I have total respect for ACG, but we grew up,
everyone's saying we're better than them at this and that and that.
I'm sure that's the same for every competitor and so just hearing that we were
bought out was a bit of a shock.
[Inaudible].
We were competitors, right?
Like we were competing against each other and now we are going to work together.
Were there going to be animosity between both of the companies? Like,
what did they think of us? What did we think of them?
It was like super exciting,
because I felt like I was going to be a part of something very interesting.
The two companies were obviously rivals.
There were obviously things that were strengths of each of them.
I think that a number of us when we had, had bantered about it jokingly, um,
we saw in the back of our minds that there really would be a lot of value from
that kind of, um, uh, coming together. Um,
but we also didn't think it was possible. We didn't think it was reasonable.
I was most worried about, you know,
a negative reaction from our students.
I think both companies have really passionate brand
advocates, um, in our students. And I think for both companies,
those students were concerned about what they would lose with the two
companies coming together. And we did have some of that,
but overall I think the reaction was really positive and I,
and a lot of people commented that the companies and their features
were very complimentary.
Once we made the initial announcement, um, you know,
we announced it to A Cloud Gurus staff, to Linux Academy staff,
and then a few hours later to all of our customers and to the community. And,
you know, I think that was a relief once all of that was done.
Cause it was kinda like out there, everybody knew about it. Um,
didn't have to worry about who knew what.
I was totally blown away cause I had used Linux Academy in the past and to see
the platform I'm currently using with a platform that I used to use and I still
loved was huge.
And was raving about to everybody trying to make them jealous like,
"Hey look who I'm going to work for. It's not just A Cloud Guru anymore.
It's also a bigger company now."
It's a little bit daunting just knowing how much work is coming,
and I think everybody in both companies felt it.
The thought of trying to get everybody thinking about merging,
bringing the companies together at that point,
I think it was just too much for people.
So we decided to gift everybody 10 days off over Christmas to just go
away, disconnect from work and unwind.
So we actually shut both companies for that period of time over Christmas.
And we told everyone, "Hey, we're going to come together in January.
We're going to, we're going to start to plan for our future together,
but take some time off unwind." And I think that helped everybody just be in a
better head space to deal with the big challenges of the new,
kind of the enormity of bringing two companies together.
Doubling overnight is, uh, quite the experience.
This is now turbo-charged. If you go back and pigeon hole,
that's kind of a recipe for disaster. Our new combined life together.
It's taking a ton of work and boy, there's a ton of work left.