My Journey to WellSky
You may ask yourself; how did I get here? It starts at the beginning for all of us so that is where I will start.
The beginning:
Let’s start at the computer/engineering beginning, which is what is relevant to these journeys.
For me it started on a Christmas morning when I opened one of my gifts. A Commodore 64 (yes, I know that I am dating myself with this admission)! I used my state-of-the-art new system to program in Basic, which was really “basic,” especially mine, but more importantly I started playing Zork 1. At that point it was just Zork as there were no other Zorks yet. From there I just played games and really didn’t think this as a career, didn’t even take classes in high school. No, back then I wanted to be a pro touring musician! Specifically, the next Eddie Van Halen.
I practiced my craft more hours a day than I did my schoolwork. In my early 20s I had a good reality check—you can’t just apply to be a rock star. That is when I went back to school for computers and networking.
Learning my craft:
My classes in school were filled with learning all about different networks, systems, and systems and applications on networks. Mind you, this was during the magic time of the birth of the Internet, the one when it became commercial, and everyone received at least one AOL CD in the mail a week. This wasn’t a fancy school or a very long program, but it did springboard me to a world that fascinated me as much as music and guitars, which was really saying something.
First stop on my career journey:
After learning about DOS, Windows, Macro Viruses, Novell, bus, ring, star, and mesh topologies to name a few, I started interviewing for work. I started out on a corporate help desk for a bank that was merged or acquired 3 times in the 9 months that I worked for them and eventually became part of Bank of America. I helped troubleshoot issues related to several types of networks, macro viruses, password issues, development mainframe systems—you name it, I had to learn and take care of all this and the clients that used and relied on these systems and networks. Right before I left, I was on the team that supported the transition from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95. These were exciting times folks! The industry was heating up, and recruiters would come calling all the time. One of them convinced me to shorten my commute and make more money doing the same kind of work at Putnam Investments, which turned out to be fun, challenging, and resulted in meeting not 1, but 3 lifelong friends.
The “Boom” Times
This is the point in time where the Internet is exploding, work is plentiful, and the recruiters were fighting each other for talent. I was recruited away from Putnam to work at a consulting firm called The Monitor Group. I was able to get off the phone and go visit people in person at their desks doing desktop support. I stayed there for 6 years and moved into networking and systems roles at various times. Monitor was a great place to work at that time, but it was more than 30 miles each way and during the “Big Dig” in Boston, so double your commute time and your route would change weekly. I was recruited away again, for a position much closer to home and this time for a near billion-dollar corporation. The UniFirst Corporation. That’s right—tech work for a Uniform Supply company. At first, I was doing more of the same work, but with a twist. I was able to travel quarterly to plants and branches where we would replace the older servers, switches, and routers with new gear. That got old when I realized they sent us to Canada in winter and the American South in the summer. I moved into supporting database systems and storage for them, which kept me close to home until I was recruited away again after about 2 years.
I went to work for another place where I would stay for 6 years, Salient Surgical. They designed and manufactured medical devices for orthopedic, cancer (liver), and spine surgeries. I managed all their systems from top to bottom—desktops, networks, storage, and QA. If it was IT, I was responsible for it.
They were acquired by Medtronic and downsized and moved to Minnesota, so I was back in the market for work.
I found Global Relief Technologies and began working for them. They had two charters: they worked with the Red Cross and helped stand-up systems to manage resources in natural or man-made disasters, and they worked with US military on logistic management systems. I worked on both sides of the organization, the last project I was involved in was for their contract with Raytheon and the US Army. I managed the logistics infrastructure for the Army Green Zone in Iraq. This was a stressful existence but was the start of me trying to work for places making a difference. The systems I had to manage were to help protect US citizens and their allies while in the Iraq Green Zone. I was yet again recruited away, this time I would be moving from New Hampshire all the way to Texas!
I started to work for the state of Texas as a contractor supporting all the state agencies. Now I was working on systems for health and human services, office of the Attorney General, education, all of it. That was fun and challenging but went a bit sideways when IBM (who I contracted through) lost the contract, so I went looking for the next adventure.
The start of now:
This is how I got to where I am today. When I interviewed with Kinnser software, it was an almost 4-hour interview. I met one on one with the hiring director and interviewed with a panel of mangers, directors, and VPs from across the entire organization. I wore my best suit and was promptly mocked for overdressing in the interview (I was not keeping Austin weird). My head was spinning on my way out. By that afternoon I had an offer in hand and a couple weeks later I was at my desk and working on projects related to all the production and development infrastructure. That was November 2011, and since then I have been part of Kinnser, Mediware, and WellSky. I have taken part in datacenter moves, upgrades, mergers, acquisitions, rebranding, DevDays, Hackathons, CareForums, countless releases, and all the other numerous adventures over the past decade plus. I have been a data center administrator, a team lead, a manager, a program manager and now and senior manager within the Cloud team. I have seen tremendous growth and change over these 11+ years and I am excited about all the “nexts” in front of us.
I am Ray Yelle, senior manager, engineering, Cloud, and this has been my journey to WellSky……so far.
