Justin Merrill, MBA, BS .:|:. Platform Engineer

Platform | DevOps | SRE | K8s | GitOps | IaC | CICD | Security | IAM | Cloud | Software | Data | APIs

Now

Based on https://nownownow.com/about – Last Updated Q4 2024

Professionally

In Q1 of 2023, I was laid off from a Principal Platform Engineering role, after leaving a previous Platform Engineering Manager role with an organization that also laid off its entire technical staff that I’d been working with for nearly 2 years.

The job market is extremely rough out there in 2023-2024. Some people blame the rise of Artificial Intelligence, some blame the rapid and aggressive rise in Federal Interest Rates, some blame the challenges of finding the right candidates with some niche skillset or experience with a product or vendor that is a statistical software industry rarity. Regardless of the root causes, we all have to eat and keep the lights on. in Q2 of 2023, I started freelancing again for local businesses and entrepreneurs (Real Estate, local craft breweries, financial tools, “new App” ideas, etc). While this was great and exciting, since Q2 of 2024 I’ve exclusively focused my efforts on finding my next professional contract or “a permanent work home”.

I am continuing to learn new skills, studying for professional certifications and attending local software/IT professional networking groups, discussions, conventions and seminars. Some examples:

The list could keep getting longer if I included everything I’ve dabbled and experimented with, but these are the core technologies that I’ve focused on as we endure the most difficult software engineering job and contract market that I have ever experiences.

Personally

I have recently rediscovered the beauty and tranquility of nature and the new entertainment and dining experiences for the bustling cities in my proximity. City, county and state parks with gorgeous water features are my happy places. Paddle sports, swimming, golf, hiking and the pursuit of great live music and food have helped me re-connect with my community and expand my social circles. After some difficult years of the pandemic, it feels great to reconnect and get back to discovering new hobbies and venues.

Side Projects

There are a few interesting experiments I have explored market viability for in the realm of cryptocurrency, financial tracking and AI and general cost-reduction for competitive advantage.

Without revealing anything that you would typically need to sign an NDA for, there are gaps in the burgeoning cryptocurrency markets and the “utility” some blockchains bring to the incumbent industries. These last few years of learning more about the specifics, I’ve discovered there are not many tools for tracking crypto related transactions as compared to the well-established banking and investment industries. Using a combination of new and legacy tooling, I’ve found some ways to benefit those with diversified portfolios.

As for the use of AI, I have been experimenting with “packaging” for tools and services. With the use of “multi-agent frameworks” that leverage the plethora of Open Source LLM’s that each have unique strengths and weaknesses and capabilities. There are a few different open source APIs, “white label Web UIs” and “Retrievers” that can be packages in a way that is useful to the average user. Keep in mind, AI is a tool, not an autonomous and critical thinking robot that understands nuance.

Exploring these efficiency gains for time and cost reductions with open-source alternative products has always been a passion of mine. Weird? Maybe. But still true. What do I mean by “cost-reduction for competitive advantage”? There are many expensive vendor offerings (like AWS, for example) that have open source equivalents. I will give a basic example: Have you been using DataDog or New Relic for your platform metrics and observability? They are great, once you go through the effort of installation of the needed agents and configuration. Vendors often provides some level of support or service, sometimes even the hosting costs, too. But what if you already have on-staff expertise and plenty of CPU, RAM and Disk space in your on-premise bare metal rack(s)? SigNoz could get the job done, too, at a far lower cost for the time of your on-staff engineers that need to configure and maintain everything in your platform, regardless of “solution choice”, and the ever-dropping costs of CPU, RAM and disk space. It’s just a better spend, if you have the right team and lower-cost compute hardware compared to what you would spend in costs for a Cloud vendor over a multi-year time horizon. The same is true of libvirt and XCP-ng / XenServer as a Hypervisor, OpenStack and Cloudstack as infrastructure management, or NextCloud and OwnCloud as application, storage and data management solutions. The possible examples are nearly infinite, but you get the idea.

Volunteering

I have not helped build any houses with Habitat for Humanity in a few years, now, but I do try to be a good steward in my community through simple, small acts: Clearing debris from roadways, picking up trash in parks, waterways, sidewalks, and around my community and promoting local outdoor activities and venues to bring people together.

“The true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is watching.”-  John Wooden

Leisure

I have not traveled as much in recent years as I usually have, but I’ve been spending more time “at home” in my community, instead. I have discovered new waterways, parks, social groups and local events that bring me joy and a sense of belonging. Yoga, Golf, swimming and hiking have afforded me a peace that I cherish and appreciate after some difficult years from the pandemic. Namaste!