People@GridApp

Our people are our greatest strength at GridApp. Each month we will highlight a different employee and what makes them unique.

 

Meet Sr. Software Developer Joe

 

Whether racing other cyclists on the New York Greenway during his commute to work, or inventing concepts as a Senior Software Developer, Joe’s competitive streak can lead to many breakthroughs. Let’s hope there are more breakthroughs in software architecture than biking, since his last biking breakthrough included flipping over his handlebars and narrowly missing a bus!

 

Despite his accident-prone tendencies, or possibly because of them, Joe is back on wheels again and is proud of his penchant for adventure that defies programmer clichés. He is just as at-home behind the handlebars of his self-built mountain bike as he is when writing Perl. In his quest for the perfect death-defying mountain trail, he has traveled to places as far away as Hawaii and the mountains of Washington State.

 

Hailing from Washington, D.C., Joe was introduced to programming in the hallowed halls of The Library of Congress, where his father has been employed as a Software Engineer for almost 30 years. After studying computer science at Virginia Tech, Joe’s wanderlust led him to Seattle, home of good coffee and quirky diners. Not to be left out of the local culture, Joe established an Internet café in the corner of one of those quirky diners called DinerNet. But it wasn’t long before he was sought out by another local corporate empire, Amazon.com, and working on the design team responsible for building their image server infrastructure.

 

Always looking for a challenge, Joe moved to New York City hoping to find a home in the frenetic and ambitious technology world culture. After settling in the northern tip of Manhattan, he stumbled across an ad for an opening at GridApp on Craigslist, and the rest is history.

 

 

 

Meet Mr. Database Eric

 

Eric was living in Portland, Oregon in 2002 when the original five founders of GridApp Systems decided to combine their database expertise and brain power into a conglomeration that would certainly succeed – even though it took a few months to stumble upon this great path. Ever since they decided that database automation is an opportunity they could really sink their teeth into, GridApp has been about bringing process-improving methodologies to the public, “While living in the South East section of Portland on Hawthorne Street I had a lot of time for a daily constitutional walk (usually up Mount Tabor Park, a rare defunct volcano found inside city limits – looking a bit like Zeus from the head up helped make the journey metaphysically possible) and walking over the numerous bridges that separate downtown from where I was geographically situated.” These walks served to coalesce the bits and pieces of mental energy that would provide the structure to solve the complex problems and overcome the technological obstacles surrounding database automation.

At GridApp, Eric and his team are the go to folks for all database related questions. GridApp is a heterogeneous shop in many ways, including platforms and automated database products. Eric has expertise in working with Oracle, MSSQL, Sybase, DB2, Postgres, and MySQL. Especially when working with clusters, questions come up either from customers or internally that need an authoritative analysis and response – this all falls under Eric’s purview. Each customer has their own requirements in the database space – sometimes those requirements go beyond the out of the box capabilities of Clarity. That’s where Eric shines. Eric works closely with customers to extend their existing database functionality using Clarity and Clarity Actions.

 

When Eric isn’t at work (or isn’t dreaming of work) he is usually cooking or eating,“I can’t decide which I prefer between the two- which is a good thing here in Manhattan, where it would be prohibitively expensive to eat out all the time.”  When the Good Eats inspiration hits, Eric brings food into the office that he’s personally cooked – some classics include: egg-rolls, lasagna, and bread pudding. Eric brings the same technical analysis skills to the skillet as he does to database management – it’s all about ratios, processes, redundancy, and SLAs – getting hot food to the table in a timely fashion is quite a challenge when dealing with contention for resources (oven, range) and differing preparation times.

 

Eric is an avid music appreciator – favorite performers include Phish, Miles Davis, Grateful Dead, Talking Heads, and the like. He’s been to a hundred Phish shows and he certainly hope that, pending their return to existence, he will have a chance to see at least that many shows in the future.

 

 

 

Meet Marketing Manager Cindy

 

Cindy joined the GridApp marketing department in April 2007. Why? Her first job was at a start-up, and ever since then she missed the 24/7 cycle of excitement, the free ice cream (well, maybe not) and the usual horde of eccentrics who tend to populate start-ups. At GridApp, Cindy works in all functions of marketing, from maintaining and producing content for the web sites to planning events to working closely with sales on lead generation, “It’s exciting to be back at a start-up. I gained so much in my first start-up experience that I was eager to return to something similar. I wanted to be back in position where I would continue to learn, make an impact, take on larger projects, and grow in my career. The environment at GridApp is challenging, but the people here make it quite fun—which you could probably gather from all our company photos.”

 

Cindy grew up in Boston, MA and graduated from Syracuse University with a B.S. in Marketing Management and International Relations. At Syracuse she was a member of the marching band, basketball pep band, a service sorority, the Syracuse Literacy Corp, and also studied abroad in Madrid, Spain. Cindy has been an active community volunteer since high school. She has volunteered at Special Olympics events in Boston and Madrid, was an Ethos reader to the blind elderly, Big Sister for the Big Sister Association of Greater Boston, and has done some volunteer work with New York’s Children for Children non-profit organization. “Since I moved to New York, I haven’t been able to volunteer as much as I’d like. There is so much to do—restaurants, shows, museums, shopping, etc. that it’s hard to find time outside of work to volunteer. And there are so many volunteer opportunities throughout the city that it’s hard to find one area to really focus in on. My good friend from college happens to work at Children for Children and I have been able to do some volunteering with her organization. In August I participated in their first annual Ice Cream Run fundraiser. We visited several ice cream locations throughout lower Manhattan and racked up points based on how many places we were able to get to and how much ice cream we could buy in the time allotted. Since good friends and ice cream were involved, it hardly seemed like volunteering, which I find usually happens with volunteer work. GridApp doesn’t have a corporate volunteer program—yet. That’s the great thing about start-ups, you can make things happen.”

 

 

 

Meet Software Developer Packy

 

Though Packy's greatest talents lie in his coding skills, his first love is music and the stage. Packy is from upstate New York where he has worked for several years as a developer, but has consistently participated in local community choirs and amateur productions of several plays and musicals as both an actor and a techie. He earned a Theater Association of NYS award for Excellence in Sound Design for his infusion of personality into the voice of God in Not So Common Players’ production of Two by Two, a musical about Noah’s ark, and he met his fiancé when they were both cast in a production of Guys and Dolls.

 

Packy’s favorite production, however, was the Delta Xi cast of Alpha Psi Omega’s Man of La Mancha, where he played the Padre.  He says the entire rehearsal process was a blast, but he especially enjoyed the mid-week brush up rehearsal between the two performance weekends.

 

“This group has a history of goofing around during their brush-up rehearsals, while making sure they get their lines right.  While going through the fight scene where Don Quixote is attacked by the muleteers, everyone onstage started moving in ‘bullet time’ from The Matrix.  The woman playing Dulcinea sang her songs with overblown yawns and a few snores.  I didn’t know what I was going to do until just before I walked out on stage, when I spotted someone carrying a pair of rabbit ears.  I grabbed them and walked out, and for the rest of the show, I played the Padre with the voice of Bugs Bunny.

 

“Everyone was on the floor laughing, but they were sure I wouldn’t be able to keep it up through the Padre’s big song, ‘To Each His Dulcinea’.  But not only was I able to keep it up for the whole song (“… a rabbit with carrots in his hand has… carrots, after all…”), I was able to hold the note at the end for the full 8 measures, something I’d never been able to do during the performances.”

 

Packy says that, to him, theater is a lot like software development.  “They’re both creative, problem-solving activities.  You’ve got the director, who’s like the project manager, making sure all the pieces come together and fit into a unified whole, and then you have the players, both acting and technical, who are the programmers, making sure their bit of the production works and does its part to transport the audience into the world we’re presenting them.  If you do your job well, the effect is amazing.”

 

Of course, it helps to have fun while you’re doing your job. “That’s why I love working here at GridApp,” observes Packy.  “The folks here are all really creative, have great senses of humor, and are a lot of fun to work with.  It’s nothing like working in the stuffy, corporate offices I’m used to.  Granted, nobody has randomly burst into song like they do in the theater, but I figure it’s just a matter of time until that happens.”