Graduated in 2015 with a major in Professional Music. Principal instrument: guitar.
Position: Site Reliability Analyst at Priceline.com, a large, multinational corporation focused on getting people deals on hotel rooms and other travel expenses. Sky works 12-hour nights shifts, and his job involves a lot of “break management” — what to do when the tech starts not working as designed. “When that happens I’m the person who leads the resolution and calculates the dollar loss to the company. There’s a whole hierarchy of thresholds we get involved based on how severe the break–who gets involved, how fast it needs to get resolved, etc.”
Overview: After graduating, Sky moved home to the wealthy community of Stamford, Connecticut and made good money giving private music lessons. In 2018 he had the opportunity to do a multi-month tour, but realized that would mean losing all of his students and he wasn’t ready to make that leap. The finance company, Bridgewater, where his mother worked was hiring, and–tired of hustling and feeling poor–he applied. He worked very long hours as a trade operations analyst in finance for 1.5 years, but didn’t like the corporate culture (though he did enjoy the technology) and thought hard about what he wanted to do in his life. He left the job just before the pandemic, sat out the draconian no-complete agreement, then applied to both finance and tech jobs, while extensively learning various software tools.
A former manager at Bridgewater was working at Priceline and put in the word for Sky. They were initially skeptical about hiring him given his background, and he was similarly skeptical about working for a large corporation but in the spring of 2021 they decided to give him a chance while Sky felt good about the people he met. The first few months at work were exhausting, as much of his off-hours were spent upgrading his skills, but he has made it to a good place in his job.
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You can see Sky’s LinkedIn profile here.
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Choice Quotes: “I enjoy the tech because it comes naturally and easily to me. From building my own computers to understanding the software. I enjoy it in large part because I’m good at it.”
“Music has made me really good at learning new things, and computer languages are easier than you’d think.”
“If there’s a way where you can improve your financial freedom and you can still do the music that you want to do, make that money! You’ll shred just as hard next season. Take the leap. Now that I am financially good, it’s way easier for me to do an album and pay what I need to to make the music as good as it can sound. Being able to self-fund may allow you to do more original music than if you’re in music full time.”
“If you’re thinking of working as a reliability engineer, know that most companies care way more about your current skill sets than your formal education. You’ll have to prove your skills. You have to have the patience to take online classes until you’re at the level of people with computer science degrees. You WILL be tested and it will be hard! It’s like having to be good enough to pass auditions for a band.”
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