![]() “When you see companies that have that one person, the person that feels like they can never take time off because there’s too much on their plate,” he explains. It’s part of a larger philosophy he employs: no heroes and no mercenaries. Hamilton says he prefers to act in a coaching role, helping develop his team to make good decisions and understand what motivates and fulfills team members as individuals. “My job is to guide their passion, knowledge, and energy toward the results that will drive the success of our customers within the business.” “I have to be able to trust my team because they have the detailed knowledge and understanding,” he continues. I had to be frank with myself that the paradigm of leadership has shifted, and I can’t expect to have all the answers all the time. “When I became a leader, I realized that I have to identify as many of those right-hand people as I can. “I came to leadership after being used to being somebody’s right-hand person,” he explains. Hamilton’s own transition from an individual contributor to a leadership role has demanded the cultivation of a skill set that wasn’t necessarily the reason for his rise in the first place. But Hamilton says the company is committed to the change. Given the expansive growth of Databricks, the expanded perspective is required, but it can be challenging for an organization that is quickly growing to also evolve its working style. It’s more of a project around business processes, how those live within our system, and how you configure the systems to support those business processes,” Hamilton explains. “When you take a company that’s used to working in silos and take on a project of this magnitude, you have to realize it’s not just about technology. The process touches sales, legal, operations, the product team, and virtually every other part of the organization. The “Configure, Price Quote” (CPQ) system helps ensure that products a company is selling are consistently quoted, and that customer entitlements created from that quoting process (and contractually obligated) can be appropriately billed. ![]() “CPQ is a project that wrecks that entire model.” “All start-ups go through that period where individual departments work great within their lane, so it’s easy to keep the blinders on,” Hamilton explains. ![]() Having previously built out IT operations for MuleSoft, Hamilton has a key understanding for what a quickly moving company needs to get to the next level. One of Hamilton’s major focuses over the past two years at Databricks has been helping the company become more interconnected. What is needed often differs greatly from what is being asked.” To really understand what the business needs requires listening and guiding the stakeholders. “When you hire people with strong EQs, you ultimately need fewer people overall, and you’re not just throwing bodies at a problem. “I look for people who have a high EQ and understand that what we’re building is for people,” Hamilton says. In fact, to succeed on Hamilton’s team, you need to be more than a skilled technician-you need to be a communicator. In stark contrast to the stereotypical quiet IT guy, Hamilton says the field has moved far past the old image. “But the people are the constant.” Mike Hamilton, Databricks Photo by Julie Hamilton “Technology changes all the time,” he continues. It’s about the people that create the technology for the business. It’s about the people that serve the technology to the business and make sure it’s running. It’s about the people that use the technology. “The life lesson I’ve learned in my career in technology is that it’s not really about the technology,” explains Hamilton, who is the vice president and head of IT at enterprise software company Databricks. While evolving along with it, Hamilton says there’s a constant that remains as true as it did a decade ago. Hamilton has been in the field long enough to have watched the long evolution of technology in the workplace. Transition from technical expertise to leadership, while recognizing just how valuable people are to any tech infrastructure? Absolutely. Successfully navigate employees from fearing technology in the early 2000s to helping them demand more from their experience? He’s done it. Build an IT organization from scratch? He’s done it, twice. Mike Hamilton is the IT expert to ask because he’s done it all.
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