Story · Early career

My year in Palo Alto

The most educational year of my career: a stealth networking startup, the whole stack, and a lot of generous, exceptional people.

Early in my career I spent a year at a stealth network-virtualization startup in Palo Alto. I developed and extended the company's in-house test automation harness and, because of the startup nature of the place, worked across the entire stack — from hardware debugging to high-level software design and the integration of various open source systems.

Most of it was Python, with some shell and PHP along the way. Working in packet-switched networking, I became genuinely proficient at debugging networks.

Old photograph of a young boy at an early home computer
Preparation for Palo Alto began somewhat earlier.

What stuck with me most was the people: an environment full of exceptional engineers who were still genuinely generous in bringing a junior up to speed. It set the bar for how I have wanted to work ever since.

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