This week I posted on LinkedIn and Twitter that I was making myself available to consult with companies on their infrastructure. I thought I might dive into why I am doing this.

Starting a Business⌗

Starting a business is hard, especially when considering building software. Open source is predominant (rightfully so) and Software as a Service (SaaS) is the trend. I have spent the past couple of months working through a business plan and have some pretty ambitious goals.

Having a plan is all well and good, and I started diving in right away. However I realized two things:

  • My life outside of work has been incredibly busy and required more attention than I was willing to acknowledge.
  • My experience in the tech industry has been comprised of bleeding edge tech startups that represent a small portion of the practices around infrastructure and incident management.

The first point is just a matter of timelines lining up. With a family and responsibilities there isn’t much I can do here. It is a reality that I have to live with that my time right now comes at a higher cost. Everything is fine and our family is flourishing, and part of that is because I prioritize that work.

I have also found that when working alone it easy to make that excuse. The flexibility itself needs to be constrained and while I am working on that it means I have to find a practical way forward to be able to sustain my work.

The second point was something I have thought about for a while. I have a few products that I am working on that would benefit from a more varied perspective than the startups I have worked for. It is true I worked at VMware, which is anything but a startup, however, the business unit I was in was very similar. We were quite isolated from the rest of the company and had autonomy to make the decisions we needed to succeed.

There are a lot of companies out there that have production systems that are a vastly different shape than some of those I have worked on. I want to build products that help them. I also want to understand where the pain is that they are experiencing. It would be easy for me to build something I think is right, but it means much more to users to build something that works for them.

Given the cross section of these two areas I think it is good time to open up my time to others. Not only does this provide me some income while I do this research but it also gives me a more clearly defined schedule while I work on getting organized.

Honestly, I’m pretty excited about the prospect. I have learned over the years that I only see in part and working with others produces something much more fulfilling. I want to help companies develop empathetic incident management systems, build and managed infrastructure that doesn’t immediately become a heaping pile of technical debt, and help companies grow their infrastructure while being easy to maintain and adapt to their business needs.

I have a proven track record of reliable, pragmatic solutions when it comes to infrastructure, incident management, and team building. I think I can help your company improve in some of these areas. If you have a problem that you need help on, reach out to me at [email protected] and let’s chat.

I look forward to working with you.