Road to becoming a System Engineer - from Pentium CPU to scalable architecture
Martin, a member of the team since October 2014, has spent his first three months at tentwentyfour1024 studying the various tools that we use at the company and has spent them well, learning a lot about the tools of the trade! We know that the first few month at tentwentyfour1024 are particularly hard ones, learning so many new things, often entirely from scratch but Martin has finally – the X-mas holidays are to blame – found the time to introduce himself, his tasks here at tentwentyfour1024 and what he will be working on in the weeks to come.
The early stages
I’ve always loved, at least as far as I can remember, everything computer related. I got my first computer – a Packard Bell sporting a whopping 450Mhz Pentium II CPU and the Microsoft Windows 98 operating system – for my first communion in 2000, but didn’t use it for much at first, except for playing video games.
The games got me bored pretty quickly though and something else soon started tickling my curiosity: the computer itself. I wanted to explore understand how this device was working on the inside and by starting to carefully take it apart, my love for computers was cemented.
Following a passion
A bit more than ten years later I found myself on the hunt for a job and it was clear from the start that I would be looking for a position in the IT sector.
I did not have any educational background in computing as I studied Economics and Social Sciences but I had been tinkering with computers since I was a kid and used an Apple Computer for a few years and so my first employer gave it a shot hiring me as an Apple Certified Support Professional (ACSP).
I kept that position for nearly two years and two different employers before joining the tentwentyfour1024 crew in October. When quitting my previous jobs for reasons I won’t dwell on in this posting I found myself at a crossroad: continue working in a well-known environment or take on a new challenge and try myself at things I hadn’t done before?
tentwentyfour1024 or the turning point
Guess I chose to try out something new and contacted the guys at tentwentyfour1024 to join their team. Their approach to software develoment is what fascinated me: a group of people working together to continuously deliver software. It’s not about the “who” but more about the “how”.
In my everyday tasks I find myself confronted with awesome projects running with docker, capistrano, behat and so many other tools I had never heard of before, basically all the bleeding edge software you could ever imagine and then some.
My main goal at tentwentyfour1024 is to expand my skills and experience: beef up my coding skills and get familiar with automation tools whilst also seeking out new projects and roles. At the same time it’s also my job to help the company move to a faster test and deployment rhythm, trying to give it a stronger technological advantage.
Get to know Martin: