Sal Furino

It's kind of a mix. I'm in the office about three-ish days a week. I have a bit of a lengthy commute, but sometimes in office collaboration, especially when I'm working with teams to figure out what is a good SLO and so forth, it's just way easier to just get on a whiteboard and start talking things out and having that in-person communication. Other days when I have to really buckle down and get some work done, I like working at home, throwing on my headphones and just being comfortable in my own space. So, I find it's a good mix of both worlds.

I'm not sure if it really counts as tech, but my first technical job was working in the IT department at Marist College, doing desktop computer repair and stuff like that. It was my work study job, and it was a really interesting experience. It gave me a core skill set of troubleshooting skills, and understanding different testing loops, like things you have to do to try to get information and make hypothesis, verify it, and move forward and restoring service.

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In college I had servers that I ran—physical ones and ones that were in data centers which I rented. So I've always been interested in infrastructure, but reliability really hit me over the head when the Google SRE book was published in 2016. That was the "eureka" moment for me. It captured these ideas that I had already, but explained them so much better than I could, and then it took them three steps further.

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As soon as I read that book, I knew this is what I want to do with my career. This is what I want to accomplish.

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Graduating College.  I started my bachelors in 2006 and didn't end up graduating until 2021.  Due to me being "neuro-spicy", and neither of my parents attending college, I had several academic challenges and life difficulties.  But I'll never forget the "surprise" and how happy my mom was when I finally gave her my diploma for her birthday. I need to give a shout out to everyone at the Marist College Higher Education Opportunity Program. I never would've achieved my professional success without your years of guidance and tutelage.  Thank you.

Don't listen to anyone—especially me—who wants to give you blanket generic advice. Seek it out for yourself from people who have had similar obstacles as you and have achieved what you aspire to someday. A personalized thoughtful email or message goes along way to developing a relationship or mentorship. If I had to pick one thing, I defer to Mrs. Frizzle: "Take chances, make mistakes, get messy".

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Food. 100% food. I'm a home cook as a hobby.  I enjoy obtaining high quality or specialty food ingredients and making dishes with them.