Today I was notified that I am being laid off from the upstream OpenStack Infrastructure job I have through HPE. It’s a workforce reduction and our whole team at HPE was hit. I love this job. I work with a great team on the OpenStack Infrastructure team. HPE has treated me very well, supporting travel to conferences I’m speaking at, helping to promote my books (Common OpenStack Deployments and The Official Ubuntu Book, 9th and 8th editions) and other work. I spent almost four years there and I’m grateful for what they did for my career.
But now I have to move on.
I’ve worked as a Linux Systems Administrator for the past decade and I’d love to continue that. I live in San Francisco so there are a lot of ops positions around here that I can look at, but I really want to find a place where my expertise with open source, writing and public speaking can will be used and appreciated. I’d also be open to a more Community or Developer Evangelist role that leverages my systems and cloud background.
Whatever I end up doing next the tl;dr (too long; didn’t read) version of what I need in my next role are as follows:
- Most of my job to be focused on open source
- Support for travel to conferences where I speak at (6-12 per year)
- Work from home
- Competitive pay
My resume is over here: http://elizabethkjoseph.com
Now the long version, and a quick note about what I do today.
OpenStack project Infrastructure Team
I’ve spent nearly four years working full time on the OpenStack project Infrastructure Team. We run all the services that developers on the OpenStack project interact with on a daily basis, from our massive Continuous Integration system to translations and the Etherpads. I love it there. I also just wrote a book about OpenStack.
HPE has paid me to do this upstream OpenStack project Infrastructure work full time, but we have team members from various companies. I’d love to find a company in the OpenStack ecosystem willing to pay for me to continue this and support me like HPE did. All the companies who use and contribute to OpenStack rely upon the infrastructure our team provides, and as a root/core member of this team I have an important role to play. It would be a shame for me to have to leave.
However, I am willing to move on from this team and this work for something new. During my career thus far I’ve spent time working on both the Ubuntu and Debian projects, so I do have experience with other large open source projects, and reducing my involvement in them as my life dictates.
Most of my job to be focused on open source
This is extremely important to me. I’ve spent the past 15 years working intensively in open source communities, from Linux Users Groups to small and large open source projects. Today I work on a team where everything we do is open source. All system configs, Puppet modules, everything but the obvious private data that needs to be private for the integrity of the infrastructure (SSH keys, SSL certificates, passwords, etc). While I’d love a role where this is also the case, I realize how unrealistic it is for a company to have such an open infrastructure.
An alternative would be a position where I’m one of the ops people who understands the tooling (probably from gaining an understanding of it internally) and then going on to help manage the projects that have been open sourced by the team. I’d make sure best practices are followed for the open sourcing of things, that projects are paid attention to and contributors outside the organization are well-supported. I’d also go to conferences to present on this work, write about it on a blog somewhere (company blog? opensource.com?) and be encouraging and helping other team members do the same.
Support for travel to conferences where I speak at (to chat at 6-12 per year)
I speak a lot and I’m good at it. I’ve given keynotes at conferences in Europe, South America and right here in the US. Any company I go to work for will need to support me in this by giving me the time to prepare and give talks, and by compensating me for travel for conferences where I’m speaking.
Work from home
I’ve been doing this for the past ten years and I’d really struggle to go back into an office. Since operations, open source and travel doesn’t need me to be in an office, I’d prefer to stick with the flexibility and time working from home gives me.
For the right job I may be willing to consider going into an office or visiting client/customer sites (SF Bay Area is GREAT for this!) once a week, or some kind of arrangement where I travel to a home office for a week here and there. I can’t relocate for a position at this time.
Competitive pay
It should go without saying, but I do live in one of the most expensive places in the world and need to be compensated accordingly. I love my work, I love open source, but I have bills to pay and I’m not willing to compromise on this at this point in my life.
Contact me
If you think your organization would be interested in someone like me and can help me meet my requirements, please reach out via email at lyz@princessleia.com
I’m pretty sad today about the passing of what’s been such a great journey for me at HPE and in the OpenStack community, but I’m eager to learn more about the doors this change is opening up for me.
Tuesday, Oct 18th, 2016 at 6:30
Good luck Elizabeth! You deserve a cracking good job for how talented you are so stick to your guns on your needs.
Wednesday, Oct 19th, 2016 at 13:28
Well, if you want a hostile employer my employer is always hiring. That could be part of why I’m still trying to run away from it. Good luck in your searching.
Saturday, Oct 22nd, 2016 at 10:39
Go and apply for a job at somewhere like Facebook/Google?
Saturday, Oct 22nd, 2016 at 10:48
Even Canonical or Red Hat would be an idea