From Farm To Data: A Tech Career in The Database Industry

Written By Hang Ngo

Amy Tom talks to Matt Groves, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Couchbase, and Rob Hedgpeth, Developer Advocate at MariaDB about their careers. Rob and Matt are former coworkers from Couchbase; they reminisce about their career paths and their time working together. The trio gets REAL about starting from the bottom, working too hard, and learning along the way.

In this episode, Amy, Matt, and Rob discuss:

  • Their very first jobs. Matt recalls being a paperboy and Rob reminisces about his days on the farm (1:23)

  • Their education paths. Matt got a computer science degree after learning how to code on a TRS-80 computer from a book as a kid. Rob was the first one in his family to go to college; he got a Bachelor's in Computer Science from Missouri State. That lead him to eventually become a Developer Advocate (4:40)

  • Matt's book, AOP in .NET. Amy asks about his publishing story and authoring process (10:20)

  • Rob's book, R2DBC Revealed. Rob talks about his experience with publishing; he got approached by a publisher after giving a talk (14:44)

  • Rob's experience as a Developer Advocate, and the importance of establishing credibility and solving problems. (20:50)

  • Matt's advice for an aspiring Product Marketing Manager is to learn from other developers who are willing to teach you and to network with your peers (27:37)

  • If Matt could give his former self from 10 years ago some career advice, he'd tell himself to pause to ask, "do you really want to do this?" (30:27)

  • Rob's advice to his former self is to RELAX more and to stress less. This is the advice he'd give himself from 10 years ago and also from 6 months ago. Very relatable (32:15)

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