TL;DR: I’m making a move to CrowdTwist, a New York City-based startup providing social and loyalty services for some of the world’s biggest brands. I worked with their co-founder and CTO, Mike Montero, from 2001-2005 at Community Connect Inc., where I got my start as a developer in PHP and open source tools. I’m thrilled to be joining him and the CrowdTwist team on what’s sure to be an incredible adventure.
Back in 2001, I joined Community Connect Inc. (now Interactive One) as a Senior Network Support Specialist. I was an internal sysadmin, spending my time managing Linux-based file servers, development servers and things of that nature. I had been living in New York just a few short months.
CCI operated what were, at the time, some of the most highly-trafficked social networking sites on the Internet. This was before MySpace and Facebook, of course. BlackPlanet.com was one of the mostly highly-trafficked PHP-based sites on the Internet. We were doing an insane amount of traffic. Our applications had to perform well and scale. We had no choice.
Even as a sysadmin-type, I was surrounded by some incredibly talented developers, who were all working with PHP on Linux and Apache using Oracle. There were caching, using CDNs, and doing things that were still relatively new on the Web. I caught the development bug. I started writing code in my spare time, taking on little projects on the side. How could you not get totally infected in an intense, exciting environment such as this?
In early 2002, I received a call out of the blue from my boss (also our CTO), Mike Montero. On that call, he asked me if I’d be interested in moving to the CCI development team. There was only one way to answer: “YES!”
Thus, in early 2002, just about 10 years ago, I became a developer. The most lowly of the low – “Associate Software Developer.” Over the next three and a half years, I worked my way up to Technical Lead, learning a ridiculous amount from my colleagues. I had amassed this strong set of experience in systems administration and development. I was really growing my skills, and I loved every second of it. I worked many late nights and weekends…and it was an absolute thrill.
Our work was literally being seen by millions of users every day. We were building quality products, all on a home-grown internal framework of sorts. We were doing code reviews. We were writing unit tests. This was how software was built. I never knew any lifestyle but this – it was my first development gig! This was just the way things were done. This period of time really shaped my personal stance on how to build quality software that was both performant and scalable. I consider myself so very fortunate to have started with this level of experience. It’s what gave me such a strong base of experience as a software developer.
In mid-2005, I moved on from CCI and spent almost five years in an interactive agency, Schematic (now Possible Worldwide). During this time, I gained exposure to new, different technologies like Zend Framework and Memcached. This was my first foray into leading major technical projects for clients, but still rolling up my sleeves, diving into architecture and code. I was using my skills from CCI with PHP, sysadmin duties, and databases, and applying them to client work time and time again. I was working in a world that was very different from what I had known at CCI, but bringing so much of that experience forward with me. In mid-2007, we moved to Atlanta, where I stayed with Schematic.
After almost five years at Schematic, I moved on to Yahoo! for a little over a year. This allowed me to get back to my development roots, focusing solely on code and architecture. I had a great time.
In mid-2011, I made a move to Half Off Depot to build an internal development team and grow the technical side of the company as Lead Software Architect. Here, I’ve was using all of my skills: systems administration, PHP, MySQL administration, managerial duties, recruiting, and working with other departments, such as marketing and design.
Over the past eight months, I’ve made a huge impact at Half Off Depot in terms of stabilizing the application and its Production environment. I’ve branched out into using Git and GitHub, Capistrano and Amazon Web Services. I’ve also had the opportunity to continue sharpening my Objective-C and iOS development skills. Overall, Half Off Depot has challenged me, and I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve reaffirmed to myself that I’ve got a breadth and depth of skills, and that I’m still pretty sharp with all of them. It’s also reminded me how much I enjoy a startup environment.
But about a month ago, Mike Montero came calling again – this time, with an opportunity for me to join CrowdTwist, a New York City-based startup where he’s a co-founder and CTO. CrowdTwist is an emerging, unique player in the loyalty space. Think “platform as a service.” APIs, user-facing sites, large amounts of data. And an incredible team that’s tapping into this data to provide real value for their clients.
When someone you trust and respect comes calling and seeks you out, you listen and explore. And that’s exactly what I did. And let me tell you, the CrowdTwist team is INCREDIBLE. I could not be more excited for this career change, both for the opportunity to work with Mike once again, but also to work with all of the brilliant team members and their clients.
I’m in a unique position where I had almost five years of CCI-level experience, coupled with seven years of experience since then. Now I’m going back to work with Mike and the CrowdTwist team, where I’ll be able to bring my strong foundation from CCI, along with all that I’ve learned in the years after CCI. My career has come full circle with respect to the last decade.
I typically like to make a job change, then stay there for at least four years as I did with CCI and Schematic. However, this opportunity with CrowdTwist is so rare that I had to take it. To be with this caliber of talent in such a promising space where they’re truly a pioneer? You just don’t say “no” to that. Or if you do, you regret it in a few years when they’ve been wildly successful.
So, on March 12th, I’m joining CrowdTwist full-time. I’ll be working remotely from Atlanta, but traveling up to New York City from time to time. I’ll be focusing on a mix of back end development and architecture, systems administration, and helping the team continue building quality software.
To my Half Off Depot colleagues, it’s been incredible! We’ve done some great things together. I wish you all the best of luck. Also, this has easily been one of the best team of technologists I’ve ever worked with. Thanks, guys.
To my future CrowdTwist colleagues, thanks for welcoming me! I’m so thrilled at the opportunity to join you. This is going to be an incredible ride. I’m ready to rock.
See you soon, CrowdTwist! And if you’ve read this far, thanks. :)