How I Broke Into the Startup World After High School

This week for Pivotal Voices, we’re featuring Dwayne Forde, Director of Engineering at Pivotal Toronto.

I’ve always categorized myself as a problem solver, and programming is a way for me to make the most impact in terms of solving the problems that exist today world. It’s really enjoyable to be involved in something that goes from idea to planning, execution, and and releasing people to see how they use and interact with it.

My dad worked in construction, which I feel is akin to what I do; I guess I inherited a little bit of that — creating bits and pieces while focusing on a larger outcome. Although with software solutions, there is the possibility of completely changing your environment to your needs in-place, which I think it special. For example, we might one day get to a place where your house notices that you’re not really using a room and removes it or replaces it with something more useful, but we can do that today with software.

High school is when I got interested in programming and started reading a C++ book. I was always one of those “I must take everything apart!” kids; So naturally, when I was playing a lot of games, I eventually wanted to know hot to make them. My first programming job was making a Flash advertising system to dynamically display promotions in stores and restaurants.

I did not go to a university. I got hired out of high school to do small programming jobs. From there I worked for a couple of startups, then eventually started my own company where I was making a weird fusion of FreshBooks and Google Docs before those things existed. It was tailored to the collective problems I observed in the startups I had been to, had a few clients, and kept the lights on for awhile.

One day, my high school friend called me and said “Hey, come check out Xtreme Labs”, I replied “I don’t want a job.” So he nonchalantly responded with a, “Just come and hang out.” When I went to the office, I got shuffled into the games/meeting/hangout (startup life) room. Then one person would come in and ask me a few questions, and another would come in and ask a few more with increasing intensity… At the end, both founders came in and said, “We really want you to join. There’s a project that you need to join and you need to learn Rails in 3 days.”

I was still young and realized I needed to be in this kind of environment, but had spent my previous years fully immersed in the world of PHP. I took on the challenge and stayed up night and day just reading Rails books and making small same projects until I was comfortable with the language & framework by the deadline. Little did I know this cycle would continue until this day, and has helped me grow in ways I never thought possible.

It’s a nice to know that a few lines of code can be distributed in Pivotal Cloud Foundry and make thousands of lives easier, better, faster, and more efficient.

Xtreme Labs didn’t have anybody who knew, or wanted to deal with, IT-related things. I had to learned those skills from previous jobs where I was setting up infrastructure for small businesses. Amongst many things, we once decided to set up a system where we bonded DSL lines together (MLPPP) because we couldn’t afford fiber at the time. It was a bit unstable, so I had to be inside and outside the server room while programming and attending client calls. It was challenging but fun. If the internet went out, the default reaction was to yell “Dwayne! The Internet! 🙌” and I’d go fix it with anyone who was curious about the set-up.

What I like the most about Pivotal is the people. The pairing, stand ups, culture and all the communication that you have with really smart people is irreplaceable. It’s a nice to know that a few lines of code can be distributed in Pivotal Cloud Foundry and make thousands of lives easier, better, faster, and more efficient. The open structure, projects, environments, etc where you can just collect all these tidbits of knowledge from different people and raise your own skills to the next level is essential to my continued growth.

Change is the only constant, so individuals, institutions, and businesses must be Built to Adapt. At Pivotal, we believe change should be expected, embraced, and incorporated continuously through development and innovation, because good software is never finished.