The number I put in the application was 892 percent.
That was how much I said Beatport had grown during my time there. The exact number came from the material I was using then, but the shape was easy to recognize without a spreadsheet. More customers meant more files, more traffic, more database work, more storage, more servers, and more ways for a small decision to become a large problem.
Yodle looked like it was entering the same kind of period in a different market.
The New York company helped local businesses buy online advertising and turn it into customer calls. It had raised $10 million at the beginning of the year, reported 700 percent revenue growth, and grown from about 125 customers in 2006 to roughly 5,000.
I applied for a systems-administrator job.
My note covered the whole stack because that was how I understood the role. Data-center deployments, LAMP systems, storage, networks, databases, project work, architecture, and the day-to-day administration underneath all of it.
I wrote directly that Yodle's continued growth looked like a place where I could add immediate value and continue growing with the company.
Beatport was the example in my application. I had managed data-center deployments and worked across LAMP systems, storage, networks, databases, project work, architecture, and daily administration.
Yodle sold advertising instead of music. The infrastructure problem still looked familiar.
Yodle sold advertising instead of music. I was applying with the systems experience I already had.