As I mentioned in The End of an Era, this past Friday was my last day as a Starbucks partner. I am now a proud Starbucks retiree, but my working days are not over quite yet. This morning I’ll log into my work laptop for the first time and officially start my new role as a Chief Technology Advisor with World Wide Technology (WWT). I’ve been working with WWT for well over a dozen years as a customer, starting way back in 2011 when I was a freshly minted director running infrastructure services at...

After nearly 17 years as a Starbucks partner (Starbucks employees are considered partners because we all have equity in the company), the time has come for me to move on. Since the first week of June last year (‘23), I’ve been on what is called in Starbucks parlance a “Career Coffee Break” AKA sabbatical. If you’ve been a partner for at least ten continuous years you become eligible for a CCB of up to 12 months. It’s an unpaid leave, but you otherwise retain active status for the purposes of...