My name is Scott Johnson. I was born in California and for the most part I grew up in Tennessee. I've lived in Louisville KY and Seattle WA, each for a time, but the Nashville area is home. This is where I met my wife Lauren (we got married in 2011), we have lots of family nearby, we've built a house, and it's where we want to raise our kids.
I am a Site Reliability Engineer for Deloitte. It's an individual contributor role that is primarily DevOps work, along with change management, application support, and a little bit of infrastructure architecture work. I'm a subject matter expert on a few applications (some on-prem, some hosted in Azure) and I spend a lot of time writing PowerShell scripts. I used to work for Take Care Health (now called Premise Health), which was owned by Walgreens at the time. That was more of a Technical Analyst role on an implementation team, where I did site migrations and upgrades and worked pretty closely with our software vendors. I've been doing SRE / DevOps / Systems Analyst work since 2007.
Likes
time travel movies
tv shows that are adapted from a book series where each season is the next book
fish tacos
disney theme parks
chicken and waffles
Christmas morning
nachos made on a baking tray
light roast coffee with cream and two splendas
star wars droids that beep like they're cursing at you
korean twice fried wings
olympic curling
ice cream that's so rich it coats your tongue
frozen strawberry margaritas
The Dresden Files audiobooks
Chicago deep-dish pizza
Philly cheesesteaks
New York cheesecakes
Seattle Mariners baseball
NWSL and USWNT Soccer
one-liner standup comedians
expertly poured caramel macchiatos
black and white cookies
broadway musicals
biopic movies where they show photos of the actual people in the end credits
Christmas music played by a brass band
in-line documentation
clicky keyboards
noise cancelling headphones
wood burning fireplaces
EPCOT entrance area background music
Jeopardy, Family Feud, and The Floor
reality tv competition shows where everyone is kind to each other
used casino playing cards
tv shows that were ahead of their time but cancelled after 1 or 2 seasons
detective novels
movie soundtracks
mac and cheese made with cavatappi pasta
string cheese
monorails
knuckle bandages
perfectly ripe avocados
canned large black olives
Hostess orange flavored cupcakes
Wordle and Connections
breakfast for dinner
french fries done in peanut oil
pictures of actors with their stunt doubles both in full makeup
strategy board games that take hours to finish
having people over for dinner
Inspiration
- The lecture on career advice for new graduates that I'm glad I read early on in my career.
[read] [pdf] [archive]
- The 2005 Stanford commencement speech given by Steve Jobs that my boss printed out for me to read. It connected a lot of dots in my head and gave me the courage quit my job and move back to Nashville.
[read] [pdf] [archive]
- The piece that reassured me I didn't need to have my life figured out at 27.
[read] [pdf] [archive]
- The blog post that encouraged me to be my authentic self at work and pursue the work I found most interesting, not necessarily the most visible or most likely to get me promoted.
[read] [pdf] [archive]
- The advice I love on creating expertise.
[read] [pdf] [archive]
- The essay that reminds me that success at work doesn't equal success in life and career answers don't solve life's problems.
[read] [pdf] [archive]
- The piece that reminds me to stay curious, stay intellectually humble, and never stop learning.
[read] [pdf] [archive]
- The hard boiled advice I kind of like on keeping your work professional.
[read] [pdf] [archive]