What’s Next?
In October of 2023 I handed over the keys to my business to Rivian after signing a license agreement with them. While they didn’t own my business, they had exclusive rights to it. I suddenly found myself with a lot of free time, and I was starting to get a lot of questions, “What’s next?“. Good question I would respond, as I had an idea that maybe it was time to pivot to something new. Tech in general has always been something of interst to me, and I had begun to explore AWS at that time. I began to think to myself what my ideal scenario might look like. A company with less than 50 employees, a product that solved a real problem, something in AI/ML/Neural Networks, and I could come in and help bring the product to market. This is what my dream scenario would be, and I was hoping I could make it a reality.
The Learning Journey Summarized
You can read the full story of the start of my journey into tech here if you are interested in getting all of the details. But to summarize, for the first time in 10 years I took a vacation. After some decompression time, I felt it was time to start learning and gearing up to actually make a pivot into tech. I had guidance that getting AWS solutions architect certifications would be beneficial, and I had enjoyed learning about the cloud. Within 2 months I had both the AWS solutions architect associate and professional certifications under my belt. After the certifications I came across the Cloud Resume Challenge, which would be a great way to build my personal website I had wanted to do anyway. I learned the basics of the Astro framework, some React, built this website, and finished the challenge. Along the way I also had to learn Terraform, and some Python to build all of the frontend and backend features. My website is hosted in AWS ECS which makes deploying updates incredibly easy. When I update the blog, or anything else, I just need to build a new container image and push it to ECR. From there a couple CLI commands and I am deploying an update with no downtime. The result is a fully functional website for me to post on, and a hosting setup that forced me to put my newly learned skills to use.
So What Now?
After my challenge was completed, I had posted on LinkedIn to tell the world that I had accomplished the cloud resume challenge. The post gained moderate traction, but most importantly a few people in my network knew that I was starting to look for something new. For those who don’t know me, I am a big car guy. I have been in the local car community for over a decade, and I have built great connections through it. I was at a car show and chatting with a buddy when he told me one of our mutual friends might have an opportunity for me. Our friend, Kit Merker, had become CEO of a computer vision AI company called Plainsight Technologies earlier this year (2024). A few texts to Kit later, we had a coffee meeting on the calendar to talk about my future ambitions.
As someone that likes to be over prepared for any meeting, it was time to start the research process. I read every page on their website, listened to every podcast Kit appeared on, read every interview he had given after becoming the CEO. I created my standard notes sheet so I can keep track of everything. These notes help me begin to form ideas that can be iterated on as I research deeper. Having something to present to Kit at the meeting was important to me, it would show interest as well as some skills. My new Astro hammer finds all the nails, and a website redesign was one of my ideas. To clarify, I do have 10 years of experience working with WordPress and I understand web design and conversion rate optimization better than most non-web developers. While Astro might be my new favorite tool, I also have an idea of when it can be useful. The Plainsight website was a wordpress site, and while functional, could be improved upon. After a few days of work, I had a mostly functional website that would be good enough to present during the coffee meeting.
But Stew, You Don’t Drink Coffee!
Yes, but for good reason. If I was caffeinated I would be like the energizer bunny and would never stop. Anyway, the meeting went incredibly well, even though I didn’t have any coffee. Kit had some ideas about how I could transition into the tech world, one of which included joining Plainsight. His only concern was if I wanted to be a ‘tourist’. Essentially someone who joins the company for a short period, learn the ropes of how a tech company works, and then leave to start my own. Though I couldn’t guarantee I wouldn’t want to leave at some point to start my own company, I had no interest in being a tourist. My goal was to join and be in for the long haul. Plainsight checked every single box that I had laid out for an ideal scenario.
Kit wanted me to meet the team, and subsequently invited me down to San Francisco for the 10 year celebration of Kubernetes. Kit was the first Product Manager for Kubernetes, so he would be speaking at the official event. The event was happening a week to the day after our meeting, so it is a little bit of short notice for travel. They were hosting a dinner as well, and some of the team would be there for it. A few hours later I was booking my travel to San Francisco for the next week. I felt like I was getting the full tech experience since I have never been to Silicon Valley before. Now I was going to be going down there to spend a couple days with some of the team, getting to know them, and making sure I would be a good fit.
The Trip, Meeting the Team
It was now a week since I had met up with Kit for breakfast, and I was on my way to the airport to fly down to San Francisco. Kit had a meeting that he wanted me to join when I got there, so I was eager to get going. Originally my flight would have allowed me to get to the meeting just after it started. Unfortunately SFO had other plans, and delayed the departure of our flight by about 1.5 hours. I ended up arriving just in time for lunch and to catch the tail end of the meeting. The plan was for me to shadow Kit and Matt, their director of product marketing. Originally Andrew their new CTO was going to be on the trip. However since he had just started, he remained back in Seattle to work on reorganizing the engineering team and getting other tools setup.
After the meeting, Matt and I headed back to the hotel to sit down for a couple hours to get to know each other better, and chat about Plainsight Technologies. Matt and I hit it off immediately, having a great discussion about my fit, and Plainsight. There were already a number of projects they had in mind for me, and I felt confident in my ability to complete all of them. The most important part of the night was the dinner Kit and Matt had organized. This was a can’t miss networking dinner as everyone in the room was well accomplished in their fields. There were VC’s specializing in tech, researchers for hedge funds, hedge fund managers, scientists, tech company executives, and myself the lone non-tech person in the room. Everyone was very inclusive, and I felt very privileged to get the opportunity to meet such amazing people. The food was just as fantastic as the people in the room, I was left sitting there in awe.
The night had to end eventually, and breakfast next morning was where we could start to finalize some job details. The list of “Stew” projects grew longer, some of the hiring details got worked out, and I got to get a better idea of how my skills would be put to use. The only official event left on the calendar was Kit’s talk at the Kubernetes 10 year celebration at Google’s campus. After breakfast we were off to the Kubernetes event, which was a good time, but also a little long. There were just a few too many speakers, and probably too much technical talk. Kit killed it though, providing in my slightly biased opinion the most entertaining talk. A quick post event dinner, once again with spectacular company, and my time in Silicon Valley was coming to an end. I’d be on the nerd bird early the next morning back to Seattle and all I had left before officially joining Plainsight was to chat with Andrew their CTO. After a quick get to know each other call with Andrew, they were ready for me to get started as soon as possible. All that was left was for the offer letter to be presented and accepted.
Hired
It became official, I joined Plainsight as manager of business operations. I accepted their offer letter on the 12th, and will be starting as soon as possible. There’s already a backlog of projects ready to go, so I’ll be hitting the ground running. For now I can’t share more, but I will keep the blog up to date as I work through the projects and can publicly discuss them. This journey started in mid-March with learning AWS architecture, and a short 3 months later I am joining my dream tech company. To say that I’m thrilled is an understatement.
An Additional Website Update
Since I have been officially hired, I have removed my resume from the site for the time being. In it’s place will be a collection of recipes my wife and I have collected over the years. They used to be stored in a notes document on her phone, but after 10 years that note is incredibly long and difficult to use. Since Astro plays nicely with Content Management Systems (CMS’s), I have once again turned to Wordpress. While it’s easy for me to open up VScode and start typing out posts, Wordpress is a lot friendlier for my wife to use. The Wordpress posts are connected via API to the site, and Astro makes calls to the Wordpress site to render new content as it’s posted. The industry calls this headless Wordpress. I built a few Astro components, copied an already built API JS file, and with some quick formatting tweaks it was up and running. Now my wife can add recipes as she works through the note document, and they will be able to live on this website. Recipes can even be sorted by category to make them easier to find.
The other major update is the Send Me A Message button is now a form directly on this site. When first launched, the button sent you to LinkedIn to send me a message there. Now there is a form connected to AWS through API Gateway that sends your message to me through SES. There is also a simple lambda function that sits between the services to convert the JSON body into a format that SES accepts. Want to give it a try? Just hit the button and fill out the message form. For now, that is all I have for you from both a personal and website update standpoint. Stay tuned for more updates!