Career & Work

Chapter 0: Why Computers?

I think I was four years old when I first saw an Atari computer. The keyboard clicks are what got me hooked.

I remember my first program: 10 PRINT "Hello World!" in MS BASIC. I don't remember how old I was, but I loved every minute of my computer time.

In the early 90s, my Dad purchased an IBM 386 PC. I had it disassembled a week later looking to upgrade the hard drive—to the sheer horror of my Mom.

My first paying gig was setting up T602, a DOS application, for a local farm cooperative. In high school, I got my first 56k modem, discovered the Internet, and started picking up work translating German technical manuals into Slovak. After that, the IT gig economy opened up even more.

I used to go with my Dad to computer shows, which were amazing—I got to meet a lot of cool people who shared my obsession. Not to mention all the LAN parties and games that consumed most of my free time in the colder months. In summer, when I wasn't sleeping, I was on my bike.

Chapter 1: Where It Started

PPF Bank Prague & Freelance Java Days · 2001–2005

I feel very fortunate to have met people in Prague who literally took a chance on me for my first "official" job. My teachers had been amazing and provided references, which I believe was the main factor. I'm an odd duck, but a lucky one.

The bank was incredible—so many people willing to share their experience. I managed the MIDAS DB2 database and IBM AS/400 servers, learning enterprise systems from people who actually knew what they were doing.

The Night I Almost Ended My Career

Six months into the job, I caused a serious incident.

I had been coding on the DEV AS/400 system and made the mistake of using wrong variables that pointed to the production system. When I ran a test and wanted to drop tables in the SQL database, it got stuck after 30 tables.

It took me a couple of minutes to realize I had dropped production database tables.

The operators had already started close-of-business processes, so rollback wasn't an option. I got my boss on the phone, and he told me to call an emergency ticket to MIDAS support in the UK. Mind you, my English at that time was about as good as you'd expect from somebody who learned it from tape courses and books.

Luckily, I got a Czech-speaking programmer on the phone. Even though I thought this would be the last thing I'd ever do for the bank, it turned into one of the best experiences of my life. I learned so much from him that night. We pulled an all-nighter and fixed the situation one hour after the bank opened.

I was sent home to catch some sleep. The next day, I fully expected to be let go.

Instead, I was told I'd be going for two weeks of personalized AS/400 training.

Everyone was stern and warm at the same time. It left an impression on me that lasts to this day. I didn't understand then why people were so forgiving and kind to me. It clicked much, much later.

I think back fondly on all my colleagues and how much they taught me in such a short time.

Starting Over in New York

When our family moved to New York and I left the bank, I had to take construction and caretaking jobs for brief periods—that's what my parents could help facilitate until I got my legs under me. It was a rough change, but with a bright future ahead.

I started consulting while trying to do college. That didn't last long since I underestimated how much everything costs. Job interviews turned into gigs where businesses just wanted something coded or fixed. I started running into situations where I was competing with developers from India for software projects, and there was no way I could beat their pricing.

So I pivoted.

Chapter 2: The Consulting Years

Dataserve, ITeezy, Netology · 2005–2014

This is the era when I discovered Managed Service Providers. The money was good, and with my skill set, it felt pretty manageable—at least in the beginning.

Then I started discovering my limits.

My energy was running out. Stress became more of a companion than something that visited occasionally. Building scripts, creating environments, and troubleshooting issues daily without the backing of a team or a real budget—doing everything on a shoestring—was an unsolvable puzzle.

Task switching constantly. Working with teammates who were as stressed out as I was, or worse. It wasn't pleasant. I'd equate it to drinking from a firehose when you just want a sip of water.

I loved the technical challenges. The stressed-out customers were like anchovies on a pizza—nobody wants them there.

What I Learned (Sometimes the Hard Way)

During this chapter, I learned what not to do. Some lessons took me a lot longer than they should have.

I ended up handling most of the email platform work for pretty much all major software providers, including cloud-based hosted solutions. You also encounter a lot of data loss in MSP business, so becoming an expert in backup and disaster recovery was unavoidable.

My mind always looked for automation, so I never stopped coding—especially when it came to managing a lot of computers. I think that helped me find my niche in the MSP arena.

What I didn't realize was that the stress was slowing me down by making me dumber, sicker, and more disconnected. I lost out on a lot of opportunities because of it.

Core skills developed: Email platforms (Exchange, O365, Google Workspace), backup & disaster recovery, PowerShell automation, and the art of doing more with less.

Chapter 3: Going Enterprise

CyrusOne (formerly Cervalis) · 2014–2019

When I started at Cervalis, the team was great. We had a lot of fun and did some incredible projects together.

I dove deeper into virtualization and data storage solutions at enterprise scale. Doing racking jobs on hardware that costs millions of dollars was exciting. But I found I liked the software side a lot more than running physical deployments.

The Project That Changed How I Think

The first time I worked with a client and seven different vendors on a deployment, something clicked. I realized I genuinely enjoy that kind of complexity—the challenge of standing up a net-new hardware layer and populating it with all the workloads and architecture the business needs to generate profit.

One project I remember fondly: I needed to figure out how to split up Microsoft Exchange databases that were reaching storage limits and causing performance degradation.

This required complex orchestration—migrating to a new version while creating a migration strategy for mailboxes that would balance them evenly across multiple databases on different performance volumes.

I used OptaPlanner (now Timefold) and designed software that executed bin-packing logic to create migration scripts achieving perfectly balanced mailbox distribution. Then I automated the entire migration process.

It took me a couple of weeks to plan and code, and a month of watching it run. Seeing thousands of mailboxes flow into their new homes exactly as planned? It was deeply satisfying to watch.

The Year of Boredom (And What Came After)

Once CyrusOne acquired Cervalis, I remember a year of "boredom" that forced me to re-evaluate a lot of things. At the tail end of that boredom, the culture shifted significantly into a scarcity mindset. It started feeling like my old MSP days again.

I had major health issues due to the sudden stress ramp-up once everything started coming at once. CyrusOne was great about it and made significant accommodations for me. Once I recovered, I wanted to wrap up all my open projects, but I knew it was time to move on.

Core skills developed: VMware infrastructure at scale, enterprise Exchange architecture, disaster recovery planning, PowerShell mastery, and managing projects worth millions.

Chapter 4: Becoming the Architect

Axiom Technology Group / Proxios · 2019–2022

When I started, Axiom was a very promising startup-mode operation. The people were amazing to work with.

Here I discovered I really enjoyed mentoring my younger peers.

Unfortunately, a few months after I started, COVID hit. Since this business had a lot of clients whose bottom line was impacted, it was no longer looking as promising. The CEO was amazing and did everything to minimize the impact on employees. He put in tremendous effort to keep the party going, but we ended up merging with Proxios.

The Work That Mattered

I got to use a lot of my experience and knowledge during these transitions:

• Designed and delivered complex cloud, on-premise, and hybrid infrastructure solutions
• Led large-scale migrations—complete conversions of on-premise server infrastructures to Azure and AWS, file migrations to SharePoint
• Took on PowerShell documentation, educational videos, and mentoring for the engineering team
• Engineered multi-layered security solutions integrating modern identity control (Okta, DUO), endpoint protection (CrowdStrike), and network security

I worked with amazing clients, which produced some very good friendships that last to this day. I added significant Identity Management experience under my belt by working on several platforms that needed automation and consolidation—which also got me more involved in security.

When the company was about to be acquired again, one of my existing clients expressed interest in bringing me on directly. I decided to make the move.

Oddly, I wasn't alone. Several of my coworkers started my next chapter with me.

Chapter 5: The Current Adventure

Olaplex, Inc. · 2022–Present

When I started at Olaplex, I had a flashback to my first boss in Prague.

Working with my current boss, we have a very similar way of thinking about problems and solutions—just in different domains. It's one of the best professional experiences one can have. It's rare for me; I usually have these encounters with vendors who do software development, so they don't last. But having someone on the same brain wavelength? I enjoy it immensely.

Pretty much all of my skills became utilized here. It took me about six months to learn all the processes and systems.

The Identity Project (18 Months in the Making)

After settling in, I started one of the longest-running projects of my career.

We needed a solution to manage full-time employees—not just in the US, but across the world—and we didn't have the same HRIS system for everyone. On top of that, there's a population of contractors and vendors as large as the full-time and part-time employee count combined.

There was significant friction with onboarding and offboarding for all worker types.

I architected an in-house solution and we started with a simple approach. It took a couple of tries to find the right software developer since this was a big challenge.

After 18 months, we had a fully functional solution that addressed all friction points reported by the business. I'm really pleased with how the team brought it together - especially considering I was working on other projects and managing infrastructure simultaneously.

If the Olaplex team wasn't as great as they are, this would never have been possible with the MVP approach I opted for due to financial constraints.

Finding Money in Cloud Bills

There's a special kind of joy in finding savings hiding in AWS invoices.

Doing infrastructure revisions and discovering cost optimizations is a genuine pleasure I take from this job. Since times are tough, every dollar matters.

The team and I worked to reduce our AWS spend—a beast that consumes a five-digit sum every month and usually only goes up. We managed to get it reduced and keep the trajectory going down rather than up, without impacting any business operations.

Working with partners like Insight and Archera, we identified inefficiencies and implemented strategic adjustments.

The AI Chapter

2025 has been the year of AI entering business in a big way.

Using it as a cognitive offloader, explainer, project tracker, coder, and agent that processes large amounts of data and makes sense of it is now part of my daily routine. Olaplex adapted AI early and is making an effort to get the workforce using it daily.

I love using VS Code with Gemini and Claude AI agents.

Here's the thing: the way I tend to work - context in, problem out, but memory like a sieve - turns out to pair well with AI. Give me context and a problem to resolve, and I'm like a fish in water. But because I process so much information, my memory can't hold all of it - hence, lots of notes.

To my surprise, AI can be made to think in almost exactly the same way, but better. When I bring my experience and knowledge of edge cases, when I know what to ask for—and more importantly, what to check once I get a response—this tool becomes invaluable. It saves time and reduces stress dramatically.

I believe AI will make people who want to be better, better—and people who want to be lazy will become expertly lazier. Like any tool, it's a double-edged sword where the edges aren't always obvious.