I was an IT director looking for extra work.
That is how I introduced myself in an email about a systems administrator position. I kept it direct. I said I managed one of the largest hosting accounts at the ViaWest data center and had extensive systems administration experience.
Then I listed the things I knew: Windows, Linux, copper and fiber networks, systems architecture, SAN and NAS implementations, scalability, and growth planning.
I asked whether the position was still available. If it was, I would send a resume.
The reply came less than an hour later. They were interested. They might not need help that month, but they could use it later on a project basis.
Beatport was not a small responsibility. By June, I was describing nine web servers, five database servers, thirty terabytes of storage, and roughly eighty terabytes of monthly traffic in job applications. The site did not close at night. I was responsible for keeping the systems running and finding the next set of limits before we hit them.
I still wanted more work.
Some of that was money. Some was momentum. Some was the basic belief that if I knew how to solve a systems problem, I should find another systems problem and solve that too. I was twenty-something, ambitious, and not especially interested in protecting my free time.
The email is rough in the way my writing was rough then. It has long sentences, two periods after "etc," and a fast list of everything I could do. I was not trying to sound polished. I was trying to get the person on the other end to say yes.
They did, at least to a future conversation. I do not have evidence that the project ever started. What I have is the pitch: I run a large environment already, I know the work, and I have room for more.