Hello Daniel! Shed some light on your life’s journey.
Throughout my life, I have always been interested in how things work. I remember taking apart my first PlayStation around the age of 8 and worrying about getting it back together again before Mom found out, which I did successfully. I grew up in a very rural place, so there weren't very many technology enthusiasts. It was intriguing to learn about something so few of my peers understood.
I was very fortunate to have classes in high school that taught us everything about the basics of computer hardware and operating systems. We got orders from a local college to build their lab computers, hundreds of them. They also offered to pay for the CompTIA A+ certification exam if proven ready. I took and passed that exam at the age of 17, thus kick-starting my career.
What is your professional background?
My most valuable time was spent at my second IT job at a public school system. There, I untangled a mess of virtual machine infrastructure, wired and wireless networking, a malfunctioning backup system, and much more. I worked in infrastructure as a Systems Engineer for a few years after that and started my observability journey monitoring critical infrastructure components.
I started at FreedomPay as the very first SRE, working on using the monitoring tools we had at the time to enhance our capabilities. About a year into that role, we switched to Dynatrace and my role changed to Observability Engineer, which is my current role today.
How does Dynatrace fit into the picture, and what was the biggest challenge Dynatrace helped you overcome?
Adopting Dynatrace has not been without its challenges. The saying "teach an old dog new tricks" comes to mind. My role at FreedomPay is to be a Dynatrace expert and help push the boundaries on what we thought was possible with an observability tool.
The main challenge in our industry was extracting traces and other data without breaking any PCI (Payment Card Industry) regulations. Dynatrace has helped us overcome that challenge and is now standard in our deployment and infrastructure practices.
What makes Dynatrace Community important to you?
Dynatrace Community has been a great resource along my observability journey. I come to the Community when I have new product ideas (this happens often), or when I need help that's not necessarily a support ticket. I also like to browse and look for ideas from others on how I can use Dynatrace to help my company. We also like to stay on the bleeding edge of Dynatrace, testing and previewing many new features/apps. The feedback channels have definitely helped with this, and I look forward to seeing them for every new app that's released.
"Dynatrace Community has been a great resource along my observability journey. I come to the Community when I have new product ideas or when I need help that's not necessarily a support ticket. "
Tell us something about you that most people don’t know. What is your biggest joy or passion in life?
Outside of work, I'm a scratch golfer. I play in many tournaments throughout the year and always have to stay tournament-ready, so lots of practice. In the last few years I've been trying to take my game to the next level with new club fittings and lots of lessons. I've seen improvement, but not enough to turn pro just yet. I enjoy the grind and the outdoor activity that golf provides.
I love to travel! My bucket list is mostly travel destinations and I'm actually writing this from Scotland where I got to check one of those items off by visiting the Old Course at St. Andrews.
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