September 29, 2025 marked my last day at Splunk (now Cisco). After 8 rewarding years of learning, growing, friendships, and problem solving, I decided that it was the right time to leave in order to pursue the next chapter of my life.

Life at Splunk

I joined Splunk in September of 2017 as a Senior Software Engineer on the Business Value Consulting, or “BVC” (now SVP) team. I had followed a co-worker from my previous job to the company, and it immediately felt like a bad decision. Not because the company was a bad place to work, or because the team was bad, but primarily because I wanted to start my own company (Electriq Power didn’t quite go as intended), and I felt like accepting this cushy job would ultimately make it difficult to leave and pursue what I really wanted to do. Seeing as I spent the next eight years at Splunk, I think it’s safe to say that fear became a reality.

But, to my surprise, Spunk turned out to be a great place to work, and ultimately turned out to be something I’m happy I stuck with - I have no ragrets (not even one letter). Not only did Splunk put me and my family in the financial position to allow a bit of freedom today, but the team we built fostered some of the best friendships I’ve had at a job, and we did a lot of fun and challenging work along the way, while still managing to have a great time in the process.

Work-life balance was fantastic. We were always going to fun new places for lunch (shoutout to the #WFLT Slack channel!), and generally had all the freedom to do whatever we wanted whenever we wanted. It was a blast…but (unfortunately) nothing lasts forever.

A little over a year and a half ago, I woke up one morning to find that nearly my entire team had been laid off. This came as a huge surprise, because we had always been told that we were the “money-makers.” We even quantified our team using a custom Splunk dashboard on a large screen in our office that clearly showed the revenue multiple of our teams impact was roughly 20x our cost. But that doesn’t matter when the decision comes from high enough up to not be able to make-out the faces of those affected.

Only myself, and one other developer (Kevin) remained. It was a total bummer. And, to salt the wound even more, we were tasked with interviewing the replacements for our lost co-workers because “we need to fill those roles ASAP to maintain momentum.” At this point, I was pretty much over the job. I like to make money, but I don’t agree with the “profits above people” approach. Thankfully, our baby was coming due soon at this point and I could take my 5-month parental leave and turn my focus to more important things for a good while.

At the very least, I could re-examine what my priorities are and figure out what I wanted to do next - be that staying at the same job, or leaving to find something else.

Returning After Parental Leave

Taking five months off of work (fully paid) gave me a perspective shift that couldn’t be undone. I couldn’t unsee what I had seen, and it was clear that I didn’t want to work at this job anymore.

From February 2025 to September 2025, I leveraged my nights and weekends planning my exit - crunching the numbers and checking all the boxes I could think of to free myself from a situation that was burning me out.

And by September 2025, it was clear that we could afford to allow me to disconnect from work for a while and focus on what I’ve always wanted to do - start my own company.

Docuview

Those who know me know that technically this isn’t my first company. I started Electriq Power (IPO in 2023) with my friends back in 2016. But, due to many reasons, that endeavor didn’t pan out the way I wanted and was an utter disappointment.

This time around, I’m doing it my way - because I can.

Docuview is a SaaS platform for real estate agents to manage their listings. It leverages AI (new hotness!), and gives agents everything they need in a single place to manage their active listings.

But, more importantly, Docuview is private, fully bootstrapped, and 100% owned by myself. That means we don’t have a board, investors, or anyone to pressure us into doing things we don’t want to do. And this is where the true value of this business is for me - freedom.

The freedom to do what I want, when I want, is more valuable to me than to most people. Yes, everyone would love to do whatever they want, whenever they want - don’t get me wrong. But, most people are also capable of being fully happy while being employees and just doing what they’re told. And that’s great.

I, on the other hand, have ALWAYS struggled with authority and loss of autonomy. When I’m told to “stay in my lane,” it just makes me want to veer more. That’s always how I’ve been.

So, the solution to not being good at staying in a single lane? Own the entire damn road. Now I can bounce around to tasks that I find most interesting at any moment without being scrutinized or repeatedly reminded about KPRs and priorities and all those bullshit metrics that are made up anyways.

So the goal now is to just have fun with it. Solve problems, create value, grow, improve, etc. No major pressure, but realistically this is still a business and I do eventually need to make some money. But for now, that’s a problem for tomorrow. Today, I’m just relieved to be working on something of which I have full control, and nobody can tell me otherwise. Not gonna lie, it feels great.

This is what I’ve always wanted to do, but it never quite worked out in the past because I couldn’t afford to do it. So, if I didn’t stick it out for those eight years at Splunk, this wouldn’t be possible. So, thanks, past me, for sticking it out and not quitting at the beginning. Now we can finally do what we’ve always wanted! 😎