In the early days, we were taking out loans and tapping our bank accounts to buy servers. When customers started asking for more features and functionality in the portal, developers coded non-stop to make it happen. A lot of those sacrifices aren’t very obvious from the outside, but we wouldn’t be where we are today without them. One of the biggest sacrifices SLayers make is when we need to build new data centers to accommodate customer demand … A “Go Live Crew” of employees moves away from their friends and family to those facilities to make sure the new SoftLayer data center meets our high expectations.

In the military, a soldier will “earn his/her stripes” by doing something that shows that he or she deserves a particular rank or position. The more stripes on the sleeve of your uniform, the higher your rank. As you’ve probably gathered from pictures and videos around the office, SoftLayer employees don’t wear uniforms, but SLayers love to wear SoftLayer swag, and this “mechanic” shirt has been one of the most popular sellers in our company store:

We wanted to recognize the employees that have given weeks (and sometimes months) of their time to join a Go Live Crew for a data center build-out, so we took that popular shirt and added a little flair. Following the “earn your stripes” idea, these employees have “earned their bars” for each data center they help build.

Every employee who was on a Go Live Crew in Seattle, Washington, D.C., San Jose, Singapore or Amsterdam will get shirts with location-specific graphics to recognize their contribution, and their most recent shirt will have the “bars” you see in the picture above.

As a bit of added recognition, here are the shirt recipients for each data center location:

Seattle Go Live Crew
John E., Edmund G., Robert G., Joe H., Brad L., Charles P., Joshua R., William S., Zane W.

Washington, D.C. Go Live Crew
Troy D., John E., Reed F., Edmund G., Robert G., Brad L., Charles P., Joshua R., Zane W.

San Jose Go Live Crew
Kalin D., John E., Chris F., Hector F., Edmund G., Robert G., Tim L., Russ M., Edward R., Brent R., Brandon S., Joshua Z.

Singapore Go Live Crew
Chris F., Joshua F.. Ryan G., Robert G., Hao H., Tim L., Russ M., Todd M., Kyle S., Eric V.

Amsterdam Go Live Crew
Raul A., Brian C., Elijah F., Hector F., Edmund G., Robert G., Sydney M., Stephen M., Michael P., Goran P., Mark Q., Edward R., Jason R., Brandon S., Sopheara S., Joshua Z.

And if you happened to compare the names between all five teams, you’ll notice that Robert Guerra was on every crew. You know what that means?

He has a brand new wardrobe.

CBNO.

-@lavosby