Martin Smith, Principal Engineer
Martin Smith, Principal Engineer
In this episode, Katherine chats with fellow traveler and remote worker, Martin, once in 2017 and again in 2021, about his evolving career as a software engineer.
Martin’s love for computers started to develop at a young age. In middle school, he got a job drafting answers for an AP Computer Science textbook. After spending a few years working for the University of Florida’s IT program, as well as their Bureau of Economic Business and Research, he transitioned to the world of remote work at Rackspace.
In his 2021 interview with Katherine, Martin shares that after traveling internationally and working remotely for Rackspace as a Principal Engineer, he decided it was time for a change and took on the role of Site Reliability Engineer at HashiCorp, a computer software company.
Martin encourages others to be open to possibilities to grow their careers that might not seem obvious, such as pursuing remote work opportunities. Martin shares that experimenting with different modes of work and leadership positions can help you learn new skills and have new experiences that you may not have otherwise been exposed to.
Martin Smith
Martin Smith is a Site Reliability Engineer for HashiCorp, a remote-first company that solves development, operations, and security challenges in Cloud infrastructure. He graduated from the University of Florida with a degree in Computer Science, and has previously held titles such as Principal Engineer, DevOps Engineer, Linux Administrator, Database Administrator, and Systems Programmer at employers like Rackspace, University of Florida, and Florida Bureau of Economic and Business Research.
He enjoys traveling (and remote work!) and learning languages; he's also a serial hobbyist, picking up all kinds of things like photography, knitting, bee keeping, video production, kayaking, and editing a friend's podcast. He takes pleasure in hearing about what others' hobbies, too, so feel free to reach out & share those with him. When he's not traveling, Martin and his partner call Gainesville, Florida, home, where they spend entirely too much time working on their backyard.
Show Notes
Education
University of Florida, 2005
Bachelor’s in Computer Science
Career
Database Administrator, University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic Business and Research
System’s Administrator, University of Florida’s Central IT
Principle Engineer, Rackspace
Site Reliability Engineer, HashiCorp (2019-Present)
Martin & Katherine’s Takeaways:
Remote work during the pandemic is entirely different from regular remote work.
“I was very much watching [the pandemic]— this is not normal remote work. I would remind people that this is not normal, I’m not used this, I’m not used to a global pandemic and trying to be productive. But, at the same time I was really afraid that people were going to associate [the pandemic] with what remote work is like— remote work is you can’t leave the house… I am so afraid people are going to say remote work is the worst thing in the world because their only experience of it is during this global pandemic.”
Some of the most important things you’ll do and learn are totally unexpected.
“I think that the most interesting things I’ve done and learned have been things that were needed by the place I was working, needed for the business, but not were not necessarily things that I would have gone and sought out.”
The software industry is moving and growing at an exceptionally fast rate.
“It turns out, ironically, that it might actually be easier to lose electronic data than physical books. You’d think that books fall apart, but actually sometimes the data falls apart faster. The software industry is moving so quickly that printing something out might actually make it last longer. As we build new physical technology, like flash drives, we actually only expect them to be read [around] 200,000 times. After that sometimes the zeros come back as ones- bit rot is what they call that and it’s a real thing.”
The Modern Work podcast is produced by Conaway Creative. The team behind this episode:
Hosted & directed by Katherine Conaway
Editing & sound by Charlotte Oakley
Social media by Kelly Becker
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