My story.
I started out writing code in Kuwait, then moved to the business side: leading teams, running cloud projects at Microsoft and heading business development. Today I bring both sides together to design, build and run my own products from Canada.
Kuwait: learning to build
I wrote my first production software in Kuwait in 1993. Over the next sixteen years I grew from developer to senior architect, working on the systems companies ran their business on.
In 2009 I became a team lead at Burgan National Information Systems. The job became less about my own code and more about helping a team ship, and I found I liked that just as much.
Microsoft and the business side
In 2012 I joined Microsoft in Kuwait as a cloud project manager. That is where I moved to the other side of the table: from building systems to helping companies decide what to build, and why.
Business development followed: as a Microsoft Cloud consultant at Diyar United, as director at Advanced Technology Co., and at Frogplum Solutions, where I led business development and the technology at the same time. Along the way I led customer engagements in 10 countries across 3 continents, and more than 120 companies across 4 countries came to run software my teams built.
I was also a Microsoft MVP and a user-group lead, and spoke at events like the MSDN RoadShow.
Canada: building my own
Today I design, build and run my own products from Canada: SynergiaFlow, Heedlight, Kwaver, HeroLinks and HalaPlan.
This is where both halves come together. I still love the technology and write the code, and the years on the business side tell me which problems are worth solving and how to get a product in front of the people who need it.