Eric Gipon speaking: From DBA to Multi-platform Consultant
We are living in a crazy period right now, yet the coronavirus could not stop me from looking beyond my former job. Not that I wasn’t enjoying myself at my former employer, but I was looking for more of a challenge. Did I want to become self-employed? Did I want to start my own business? Was I going to look for another employer? I was still in doubt, and then I was approached via LinkedIn by Pieter, the recruiter at OptimaData!
Click
I had an initial interview with Pieter and Edco, and then was sawed through by Martijn, who wanted to know all about my knowledge. On the way home, I already knew this would be a good place for me. Lots of challenge, different customers, service, automation, multi-platform, cloud, on premise, what more could I want?
The click was apparently mutual. After signing my contract, I celebrated another nice long vacation, and on September 1 my adventure at OptimaData began.
Ordered chaos
I can safely call my first week chaotic. In my entire career in IT, I had never installed so much tooling as in that one week! But the more I work for the various customers, the more I manage to figure out each tool. Fortunately, the documentation here is kept very well, otherwise I would get lost and not know what to do for which customer now. I’ve already put in a lot of hours of work, for a number of different customers, and have even sent my first QuickScan out the door already. I came in here with knowledge of MS SQL Server, MySQL/MariaDB, on premise and AWS, and am already making strides in PostgreSQL!
Freedom and room for own interpretation
In my first month I can’t say other than that I am very positive. It’s different working for different clients, and having to adapt to different needs all the time – before, I was mostly the DBA who had to protect his environment – but I also feel a lot of freedom.
There is a lot of room for my own interpretation, and everyone is willing to look with me with their own eye, or offer me a listening ear. How much more do you want to feel at home somewhere!
Nice chat about databases…
The lunches here are always well organized, white buns, sandwiches, not to mention currant rolls! Plus all kinds of delicious things to put on them. And then of course chatting with your colleagues about … databases! (What were you thinking?!) But there is also plenty of attention for each other, for how everyone is doing and whether we experienced anything else over the weekend.
This was just the beginning. There are certainly many months and years to come at OptimaData. I’m already eager to start working for subsequent clients and to be involved in the growth of this company.
Would you also like to know what it means to work with us?
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Full-service
Multi-platform
Professioneel en deskundig
Expertise in open-source
