#devangilist

Several years ago, I was a freelance web designer/developer (yes, both) in New York City. As my workload grew and I started creating more demanding websites, the hosting I had over at GoDaddy just wasn’t cutting it. I needed something better and stumbled upon Linode. Three years later, after enlisting in the U.S. Navy reserve component, I landed a Support role with Linode.

Support

Arriving fairly confident in my Linux and SysAdmin skills, I was immediately humbled. Nowhere have I learned more about Linux, hosting, and helping people then in Linode’s Customer Support Department. Working 4-day weeks, starting at night and leaving in the morning, I had a ball. I had an awesome schedule, got mentored by really, really smart people, and absolutely loved what I was doing. There wasn’t a more satisfying feeling than closing out a support ticket with a customer who I helped. A customer who had some sort of crisis, and I, some person on the other end of the computer, was able to assist them.

Particularly, what I enjoyed most about working support was solving puzzles. Every customer brought a new problem, with new parameters, and some unique twists. Not having direct access to customers’ files (as you would in shared hosting), much of the troubleshooting process entailed a back-and-forth of questions and commands to run. I likened the troubleshooting process with a customer to that of Dr. Gregory House from the TV show House. Yes, I’m a geek :)

When I made Senior Support, what changed the most was contributing to strategy and policy for the support department as well as training new hires. These additional responsibilities were welcomed. The Navy has instilled in me the urge to be a leader every day. Linode provided that opportunity.

Working in Support, especially for a hosting company was truly great. I even wrote a blog post on Skills Needed to Pursue a Career in Web Hosting Support if anyone is interested.

Developer Evangelism

While working in support, Linode sent me to a few events, including my first ever hackathon, HackPrinceton. I fell in love. Hanging out all weekend with a group of hackers from various backgrounds and levels of expertise to educate, instruct, demo, and debate various hacks, languages, frameworks, etc was exhilarating. I had to figure out a way to have Linode let me do that again. After some research, I pitched Linode the idea of opening up a developer evangelist position and slipped right into it.

Flying out to the west coast.

2015 alone was amazing. I’ve spent most of my life in the northeast of the United States but I traveled A LOT this year. According to an email I received from Marriott, I visited 11 cities in 2015. That’s only counting the ones that I stayed with Marriott at. I flew out to the west coast 7 times totaling over 80 hours of air travel. I flew to several cities in the south and drove a bunch to towns local to New Jersey.

Traveling was a means to an end of course. I visited schools such as UCLA and Columbia University in order to sponsor hackathons and mentor students. Appeared in a YouTube video for HackPrinceton. Visited Drexel University, Stockton U, TCNJ, and more in order to talk to classes on development, careers in hosting/support, and gave mini-lessons on Linux and various Internet technologies.

Not everything was school-based however. We did several meetups via Meetup.com. Either our own or some awesome local ones when we’re traveling. Speaking at Philly Tech Week 2015 on Developer Day was pretty fun as well.

Linode Docs (Training & Education Team)

I had the privilege to work alongside other teams at Linode full of great people. The Training & Education Team, in particular, was important to me. One of Linode’s greatest assets, provided 100% free (under Creative Commons), is the Linode Guides & Tutorials. The T&E team together with a community on GitHub produce useful guides that provide endless knowledge to people on the Internet, whether or not they are customers. I learned a lot from these guides years ago when I was starting out and during my last year at Linode, was able to provide technical testing and strategy for guides.

Development (Engineering Team)

Being that the CEO (Christopher Aker) is a developer himself, Linode has managed to track down some great talent. I got to work with them, and Chris, on a few projects and learned so much. These guys are working on projects, for the benefit of Linode customers as well as the fun of it, all the time. Even outside of work. That’s the enthusiasm I like. There are a couple awesome projects I got to be a part of that haven’t even been released yet. So look out for news from Linode in the future.

The Road Ahead

Working at Linode was a blast. In two short years, I’ve grown as a developer evangelist, a techie, and a person. As I mentioned earlier, I like the show House. I like puzzles and new challenges. I want to see how deep into the tech world I can go. How high up the career ladder I can go. I want to increase the number of people I influence and improve through knowledge, communication, and flat-out inspiring technology.

I’m confident that I will hit the ground running at my next endeavor with everything that I’ve learned. Thank you Chris, Steve, Casey, Dave, Vinny, Will, Soh, Jill, Alex, and everyone else at Linode for the opportunity, friendship, and tons of reward points with Marriott ;)

My Linode Highlight Reel