I sent somebody close to me a long technical email today. It was my response to a senior Unix administrator posting in New York.
The email was my response to a senior Unix administrator posting in New York. The role was supposed to be full-time and on site, but I had gotten the company to consider letting me work part-time and remotely until moving became possible. Maybe there would even be a relocation package if it worked out.
I want the move. I am really not where I want to be in my life as far as living it goes.
That sentence is uncomfortable because plenty of the professional story is going well. I am the IT director at Beatport. I manage the systems and the team behind a fast-growing online music company. I can look at a serious Unix posting and answer every requirement with work I have actually done.
I could answer every requirement with work I had actually done.
The company asked for Unix provisioning, upgrades, troubleshooting, and repair. I could talk about Linux, BSD, AIX, Windows, Solaris, package management, Kickstart, and Cobbler. They asked for virtualization. I listed VMware Server, ESX, ESXi, Xen, Virtuozzo, KVM, and GSX, all technologies I had deployed and managed in production.
They wanted development and QA environments, performance testing, incident management, security, capacity planning, runbooks, storage, scripting, and collaboration with application teams. I had used those tools and processes in production.
At Beatport I described a LAMP environment with more than 150 CentOS and Red Hat servers, network appliances, databases, storage arrays, development and staging systems, and the team responsible for keeping it available. I had built provisioning systems, managed global directory services, handled monitoring and capacity planning, supported application architecture, and worked across more than 200 terabytes of storage by my count at the time.
For every requirement they posted, I wrote an answer underneath it. Some answers were a paragraph. A few were simply "Yes" or "Every day."
I wrote in the private note that I had debt, no degree, too many headaches, and a brain that worked best when I could write things on paper. I was proud that I did not need to elaborate or lie about the technical work. I was also honest that the rest of my life did not feel arranged the way I wanted.
The career was moving faster than the rest of my life. I was still trying to move.
New York was part of the pull because there were more internet companies and more people doing the kind of work I wanted to do. Denver had given me Beatport and an enormous amount of responsibility. I was grateful for that work, but I wanted to live somewhere else.
I am asking for a strange arrangement. Part-time, remote, and senior-level work for a role posted as full-time on site. I am not sending a formal resume yet because I want enough detail to know there is a fit. I am asking them to look at the results I can produce rather than the expected shape of the candidate.
They may say no. The arrangement is outside what they posted, and I am not sending a formal resume until I know there is enough of a fit to continue.
What I can send is a direct account of the work. I know the architecture, the failure modes, the tools, and the responsibilities because I deal with them every day. I do not have a degree, and my finances are not where I want them to be, but I have the production experience the job requires.
I do not know whether this application will get me to New York. For now, I have sent the answers and made the request. Tomorrow I will go back to the Beatport systems and the team in Denver while I wait for a response.
The email was long because I wanted the company to see the details before deciding. I had asked for an unusual arrangement, but the production experience was real. The next part was up to them.