VMware a happy home for Dacombe-Bird

VMware’s regional manager says he learned the most at Computerland in the 1990s

By Hamish Barwick, Auckland | Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Tim Dacombe-Bird’s enthusiasm for his role as regional manager at VMware is obvious.

“If you find a job you love you’ll never work again - that is how I feel about VMware. There have been some challenging times, but you feel that you’re part of a team. The passion, focus and can-do attitude are something I haven’t seen before.”

He started with the vendor in 2006 as the local senior corporate account manager, at a time when he was one of only two staff here.

The IT companies he worked for prior to VMware will be well known to most - Computerland, Compaq, BMC Software and Citrix - but it’s VMware where he has clearly found his niche.

However, work has got so busy it is detracting from his avid golf habit, and he is also kept busy with his two daughters.

“I’ve got a 13 [handicap] in golf at the moment, although at one point it was down to three.”

He is also a past chairman of the Midlands Cricket Club in Wellington, involved in playing the sport and administration.

Dacombe-Bird unknowingly made his first steps into the IT area when he joined the New Zealand Post Office as a trainee telephone technician in 1981.

“It was a really good first job and gave me a lot of formal training towards the [telephone technician] national certificate. It honed my problem solving skills too.”

Dacombe-Bird stayed with the New Zealand Post Office for just over five years, working in the Porirua telephone exchange. The government department became Telecom following privatisation in 1987.

However, when he was talked by a work colleague into doing an Outward Bound course, his perspective and career direction changed.

“It was at Anakiwa in the Queen Charlotte Sound during the middle of winter. It was a big learning experience for me and changed my perspective on my working life.”

After doing the course, he opted to resign from Telecom and go into the private sector to seek new challenges.

“I started working for an Australian-headquarted technical organisation called Delairco Electronics as a field service agent, wandering around the lower half of the country servicing office equipment such as fax machines.”