Life Update: New Job, Same House, and Same Awesome Family!
It's been over eight years since I wrote a life update blog post. At that time (2016), we'd just moved into the "Raible Ranch", the bus was finished, and the kids were in high school. I'd just started one of my few-and-far-between full-time jobs at Stormpath.
Fast-forward to today. Our kids are in college at the University of Colorado during the Coach Prime Era, we're empty nesters with an affection for live music, and our pet zoo is cuter than ever.
You probably know me. But in case you don't, my name is Matt Raible, and I'm married to a fabulous woman named Trish McGinity. She's been a hero in my life ever since I met her in 2010. She dazzled me so much, I asked her to marry me at Versailles in 2011. We married in my hometown (Condon, Montana) in 2013, on the most beautiful lake you've ever seen.
When I met Trish, I was an independent consultant, and she was in cybersecurity sales. On a fateful night in 2010, on a friend Jarvis's birthday, I asked her what she had done for a living. She said, "Have you ever heard of OWASP?"
My heart lifted and I felt a moment of joy. This woman was speaking my language! 14 years later and Oh My!, Trish has had an incredible influence on my life and career.
You might think of me as the AppFuse guy, the JHipster promoter, or some dude who talked about Okta a lot. I'm cool with that, but it's irrefutable to say that Trish hasn't influenced my career. She encouraged me to lean into cybersecurity and constantly said I was "doing it wrong" with my carefree attitude toward security.
These days, I'm a Senior Cloud Engineer at CrowdStrike, the foremost cybersecurity company in the world. My previous gig was with Okta, where I spent seven years educating developers about OAuth and OpenID Connect.
I'll admit, I had a lot of anxiety about joining CrowdStrike. In late June, after enjoying funemployment, I had three excellent offers from FusionAuth, Yugabyte, and CrowdStrike. It's the first time in my life that I've had more than one offer at the same time.
The first two opportunities were excellent. But, both had maybe equity. As an old fogey in the twilight of my career, I thought guaranteed equity was a better opportunity. I chose the company trajectory over my passion for open source and Java. I accepted the CrowdStrike offer on July 3rd as we were departing for a 4th of July trip to Montana.
At that time, I felt totally confident about my decision. I was taking the path less traveled and abandoning all my Java celebrityism for a skyrocketing company that was kicking ass and taking names. You're supposed to do things outside your comfort zone, right?
Take the road less traveled.
I was a little worried about the equity though. After all, CrowdStrike's stock price was at an all-time high.
I turned 50 on July 16th. We hosted an excellent backyard party at the ranch the weekend before (July 13th), complete with a local Grateful Dead band. Shakedown Street was excellent and everyone had a good time.
The Incident
On my birthday, while blowing out candles, I wished for CrowdStrike's stock price to drop.
On Friday (July 19th), I woke up to more unread texts than I received on my milestone birthday. A lot of friends were aware that I'd accepted a new job at CrowdStrike and were texting me about an incident.
Apparently, CrowdStrike had just caused a worldwide computer outage. If you were flying that day, you were probably affected. I received more text messages that morning than on my birthday.
My response was positive: this situation will be very good for my equity grant's strike price!
I quickly realized that CrowdStrike was way bigger than I originally thought. There were computer issues at the golf club I ventured into that morning. Their systems were down and they apologized. I smirked, apologized back, and mentioned I recently accepted a job offer from CrowdStrike.
I started working for CrowdStrike on July 29th. 10 days after the incident. I quickly realized that making developers aware of CrowdStrike wouldn't be a problem. Everyone knew about us because of July 19th. In a sense, it was a blessing in my DevRel journey at CrowdStrike.
I worked at Okta for seven years and there were a couple of incidents. CrowdStrike's response was waayyyy different than Okta's.
First of all, CrowdStrike's incident wasn't a breach. It was a bug that they shipped. It was totally their fault. Okta had a full-on breach that they didn't disclose for a month. Regardless of the incident details, as a tech worker for said company, it's a severe morale hit when it happens to you.
That's been one of my biggest struggles. I was extremely proud to join CrowdStrike as a Senior Engineer. Heck, I passed the coding test using Java, and they were a Go shop! When this all happened in June, I was so proud of my non-traditional path to excellence in the tech industry.
I wasn't hired as a senior engineer who cranks out code, maintains functionality, and implements new features. Instead, I was hired as a "Senior Engineer - Cloud" that's focused on DevRel. I'm still a developer advocate, but my title indicates I can still sling some code.
I've been coming up to speed on Go and Python as fast as I can. I've also been doing a lot of CrowdStrike Foundry tutorials, finding/fixing issues, and improving our learning materials as fast as I can. I even published my first CrowdStrike blog post!
Now that I've filled you in on the life of Matt Raible, I feel like I've ignored the best parts of my life: Trish, Abbie, and Jack.
Trish continues to excel as the Head of Cybersecurity Communications at Empower. Yes, the Empower that has the naming rights to the Empower Field at Mile High where the Denver Broncos play. We haven't experienced box seats yet, but we're still hopeful. Trish is the star of her team, and it's her favorite job, ever. She's delighted at the fact that I'm asking her if SIEM and SOAR are acronyms or just fancy industry terms.
You're probably wondering if we're evil parents at this point. You've learned about Trish and me, but what about the kids, the pets, and our parents? I mean, this is a life update after all!
The kids are doing great. As a casual blogger, I still managed to post about both of their birthdays this year. Jack and Abbie are thriving!
They're still in school at CU Boulder and enjoying the Coach Prime Era. Abbie's a senior and already has a job. That's quite an accomplishment, and we're very impressed!
Jack's thinking about dating. He didn't try out for the CU basketball team, but he's still interested in making it happen.
The pets are currently spoiled. Trish's best friend, Caroline, has moved in. She takes the two dogs (Daisy and Kai) on daily walks. I tend to like the same activity, and they're very good at pretending it's their first walk of the day with both of us!
Our parents are thriving too! I recently attended Trish's Dad's 85th birthday celebration. He's doing splendid and likes to swim and play tennis daily.
My parents are still loving life in Montana. A friend of theirs has a photo trap set up for wildlife on the homestead. He captures some amazing photos! Check out his website for more fabulous shots.
Trish has more to her story. She's experienced some of the most extreme ups and downs of her life. In July, shortly after we celebrated my birthday, we spent a week in Estes Park. The reason was simple: she wanted to compete in a horse show and I wanted to support her, explore the nearby trails, and visit the local breweries.
We decided to make her lifelong dreams come true and leased the most kick-ass horse she could find. His name is Athos, and he was the horse she competed with in Estes Park. He's 18.2 hands tall, which means he's 6' at the saddle. Trish is only 5'1". They won Reserve Champion on their first collaboration!
Trish and Athos were a match made in heaven. Until they weren't.
A month ago, Trish fell off Athos after a jump in a training lesson. It was a tack failure while demoing a new saddle, and the stirrup strap slid right off. She almost saved it, but proceeded to fall and injure herself badly in the process. When I met her at the ER (Emergency Room), her pain level was 9.5/10 for her wrist and 3/10 for her ankle. She broke both her wrist and her ankle in the same accident. It wasn't Athos' fault, but rather a faulty stirrup bar.
Since this happened, we've learned I'm a terribly grumpy caregiver, she's had her wrist surgically repaired, and her ankle had surgery a week later.
Breaking two bones at the same time really limits your mobility. I wouldn't wish it upon anyone. Trish is optimistic that she'll compete with horses in the future, but she's also realizing it gets harder as you get older.
What's Next?
Trish, Jack, and I have all had midlife crises this year. Trish cranked things up a notch to be a world-class eventer with horses, then got hurt. Jack was going to be an aeronautics engineer, then took a helicopter flight over Glacier National Park and changed his mind. I abandoned all my Java experience and chose CrowdStrike, a Go and Python shop.
Abbie's a senior in college and already has a job. I think she's winning the family badass contest!
We have no idea what's next. But we're proud of Abbie for securing her first job.
As for the rest of us? We'll figure it out. Raibles and McGinitys are known for thriving in the face of adversity. 💪😃
For a photo and video experience of our summer adventures, see my Summer Adventures 2024 album on Flickr.