This is my third application for the same Linux and Unix administrator position.
The opening appears to never leave the Craigslist board. I keep applying anyway.
I am the Director of Information Technology at Beatport. I have spent three years inside a fast-moving internet company, first as a senior systems administrator and then leading the technology function. I have management experience, architecture experience, hiring experience, and a larger title than the job I am asking about.
I still want to talk to them.
The reason is not that I have forgotten how much work sits inside an administrator role. It is the opposite. I want to work with a skilled team solving hard problems in the most effective and aggressive way possible, with a heavy technical emphasis. I like management when it makes the systems and the people better. I do not want the title to move me so far away from the work that the technology becomes a list somebody else explains to me.
So I sent the list.
Linux, Unix, BSD, Windows Active Directory, Solaris, and OS X. DNS, SSH, LDAP, HTTP, IMAP, SMTP, POP, and MAPI. Foundry, F5, Cisco, Juniper, 3Com, and HP ProCurve across Layer 2 through Layer 7 switching and routing. MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Microsoft SQL Server. Replication and clustering. EMC, NetApp, NexSAN, Isilon, Overland, direct-attached storage, network-attached storage, and SANs. ESX, Virtuozzo, OpenVZ, Xen, and KVM.
It is a lot of nouns. In 2009, that is part of how I am trying to prove range. I even wrote that if a service can run on a Unix box, I can do it. The sentence is cocky, but the application is meant to get a technical person to call and test the claim.
The more important capabilities are underneath them: horizontal and vertical scale, monitoring, capacity planning, budgeting, architecture, security, PCI work, and figuring out when the business problem actually needs a different technical shape.
I sent another application twelve minutes later for a data-center administrator role. In that one I explained that I had brought operations in-house, built the IT department, hired and mentored staff, worked directly with development teams, and managed hundreds of servers across networks, databases, and storage.
The first two applications did not produce the result I wanted. I do not know whether the resume disappeared, the role changed, the company is permanently collecting candidates, or they looked at a director applying for an administrator job and assumed I would leave.
I need a conversation to explain what I am actually looking for.
I want a technically serious organization. I want peers who will challenge the way I have been doing things. I want the density of internet companies and engineers I keep finding in New York. I want to stay close enough to the systems that I still know whether an architecture works outside the diagram.
The management portion of my list says Agile and Scrum, architecture, strategy, planning, metrics, visibility, and accountability. The administrator portion says DNS, storage, routing, clustering, and shell access. I do not see those as separate careers yet. I want the job where the person planning the system is still close enough to diagnose it.
Beatport has given me the chance to build at real scale. I also want to know whether another strong team will value that experience when I apply for a role with a smaller title and a heavier technical focus.
The application ends the way most of mine do right now. I am very eager to move forward. Please contact me anytime. Many thanks for your consideration.
There is no reply yet. The posting is still there and my resume is attached again. I have explained my range, the scale of the Beatport environment, and why I am interested in an administrator role. The next step is theirs.
For now, I will continue in the Beatport role and see whether the third application gets a response.