interview with
John Stewart

John Stewart is director of systems engineering at startup Digital Island Inc. and occasional speaker and trainer at conferences. Rob Kolstad interviewed John electronically in early June 1998.

Rob: Seems like you've worked at several high-tech companies over the last few years. You started at NASA Ames?

John: I started in the NAS (Numerical Aerodynamic Simulation) Division at NASA Ames working for Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC). My supervisor was Michele Crabb, who led the Distributed Software team that ported software from Sun to SGI to Cray to TMC to Amdahl and to anything else that needed it. DSS also supported the email systems and the netnews systems for that division.

I was at NASA Ames for two and a half years, working for two government contractors ­ CSC and Sterling Software. (NASA/NAS finished one contract with CSC and offered it up for bid. Sterling won that bid, so we all changed employers.)

In many areas, the government bids out support and development areas to private companies. The contract will often be multiyeared and have a fixed amount of money associated with it. I worked for CSC/Sterling, and CSC/Sterling was contractually obligated to work for NASA Ames, NAS Division to provide the work we did as employees.

Rob: And then you made your move to Cisco as a full-time employee. How did you choose Cisco? What were your responsibilities there?

John: Cisco was a complete surprise, and I made one of the hardest decisions I've ever made in my career. I was originally leaving NASA/Sterling to work at QMS (network/ systems administration for a printer company) ­ I needed a change of scenery from NASA, and Hal Pomeranz mentioned QMS was looking. A while before talking with QMS, I had dropped my resume electronically to Cisco, which called me the day before I left NASA Ames.

I met, that night, over dinner with the hiring manager at Cisco. He made an offer the next day (a Friday), and I didn't sleep much at all the entire weekend.

Cisco was hiring a senior systems administrator to support the Technical Assistance Center (TAC). The systems administration team actually reported into Advanced Customer Systems, the team responsible for developing CIO (or CCO, as it is now known, the Cisco external Web site that has been its flagship for electronic customer support and e-commerce). I ultimately worked with that team, too, because I had background doing Web-based application development. So I was soon to lead a dual life.

I had committed to work for QMS, but Cisco was a real opportunity with the up-and-coming networking company.

On Monday, I walked into QMS, sat down with the HR manager and the VP of the division, and told them what I felt I had to do for myself and, to some degree, for them. I would have regretted turning down the Cisco offer if I did, and that would have made my tenure at QMS very short. QMS was really understanding, and I left for Cisco.

Rob: Do they work you hard at Cisco? How many hours were you putting in for a typical week?

John: It went up and down. I didn't record it closely, but I am betting it was 60 hours a week on average. I had a great team of people that I was working with, both in the developer part as well as the systems administration part of my job. Cisco demands you respond when things are on tight deadline or broken; at the same time, my management was more than willing to reward hard work and give time off when the deadline or crisis was over. It was a great place to work and wasn't easy to leave.My time off was critical in having a family life, seeing my sister and her husband (who lived ten minutes away when I worked at Cisco), and travelling. I learned the first year I did it that a two-week vacation in August going to places where the most advanced technology is rotary-dial telephones (upstate Vermont on a small lake) is crucial to avoiding burnout. The mountains, swimming, hiking, and just lying around for a few days really help me avoid burning out completely.

Rob: Lots of people say "60 hours per week." I think many of them include lunches, dinners, and lots of other things in their tally. Did you really work 60 hours/week?

John: I was in at 7:00 am, out at 7:00 pm, and working on weekends. We also had downtime, outages, travel, weekend projects, etc. I didn't eat lunch most days and didn't eat dinner until late.

Rob: And then the startup fever hit. Please tell us the story.

John: I left Cisco because the company wasn't the same as it used to be; part of the culture was changing. Cisco can't be the same company I joined because, when I left, there were over 10,000 more people in it than when I joined. I also left because, over time, the team I joined and wanted to learn from had migrated out as well. Only one person remained in advanced customer systems who had been there when I joined just two years prior.

Digital Island's history, and my association with it, is 100% Silicon Valley classic. Ron Higgins (CEO) had the original idea to build this international private network. He recognized he had extensive expertise in building a company, but not the technology expertise to build the network he wanted. Through a friend, he met Allan Leinwand (now DI's CTO and formerly one of Cisco's top international network design engineers).

Allan and Ron designed the entire network on napkins in a San Francisco restaurant. Allan became a consultant to DI at that point and joined full-time in early 1997. Allan Leinwand knew Bruce Pinsky (now DI's CIO, but at that time top customer support engineer at Cisco, and arguably the best network diagnostic technician in the world). Bruce knew networking and some systems support as well. Bruce wanted a person who built scalable support environments on UNIX-based platforms, which is what I helped do at Cisco. Bruce was one of the internal customers I supported and a friend, as well. Bruce recommended me, and I started consulting for DI, too.

I wasn't recruited though, really. I asked the CEO of Digital Island (Ron Higgins) if I could switch from being a consultant to full-time, and he offered me a full-time position. By then, all seven of the original people had left their full-time jobs and were full-time at DI; I was the last holdout. It wasn't easy leaving Cisco, but I don't regret it.

DI was an easy choice because there was never a downside. I didn't take a salary hit; I was enticed by great stock benefits; and I already knew who was involved (and these are top people in the network design industry). I feel good about helping build a company from the ground floor up along with being surrounded by top-flight people in their respective areas from our sales team all the way to our board of directors. As I've heard from more than one person, startup companies just don't usually go this way.

I jumped from a big company to a small company at this point in my life because I am early in my career. The industry has plenty of opportunity right now, and it sure felt like the right time to try a startup company.

Rob: What kind of position do you have? What's a typical work day like?

John: A typical day for me starts at 5:00 am (alarm!) and I head in on the "boat commute." I arrive at the office around 7:00 am. By then, in most cases, I have already spent 30-60 minutes working, using my portable PC and cellphone. Getting into the office at the quiet time, which is 7:00 am, lets me try and catch up on email, paperwork, orders, etc. before jumping into the fray. As a technical manager, I spend half the day wandering around talking to people, listening, and reacting to ideas that they are working on, finding out what walls they are running into, and trying to break down some of those walls.

One thing I am definitely learning about the startup experience is that when you are going so fast, a lot of communications get scrambled. It is really hard for me, and for all of us, I think, to keep pace at this speed. Small miscommunications can send you down the wrong path so quickly, and under this type of pressure any wrong turn is magnified. You're working, you're under pressure, and having all the right information is key to doing the job efficiently.

I spend time working out how we're going to be arranged in our newly expanded office (we move in on Friday), ordering frame relay circuits for new employees, talking about product direction, and planning out people's time. Time management for myself and the team is critical and knowing when there just isn't enough time with the existing resources is one of things I keep a really close eye on. Sometimes the answer is just "no, we can't do that" and the reaction to that can be "we'll get you more people" or "reprioritize, this can slip."

This, and I'm still not doing techy stuff yet. I've been the product developer for a recently released product, participated in feature advancements for new products, and helped wherever I can. That is what everybody does at this company . . . fill in where they can. If it means sweeping the floor, sweep it. If it means figuring out if spending $250,000 in such and such a manner is the right thing, do it. You can't afford to say you are above or below doing anything ­ it is a startup.

I've been with the company for one and a half years now, working very long hours . . . even more than Cisco.

Rob: What's a "boat commute"?

John: About the time I left Cisco to join DI, I was also looking to buy a house in the Bay area, a tough and very pricey market. Rhonda (my wife) found a great town (Benicia) north of Digital Island's second home where I work, San Francisco. Benicia is just a short drive from a high-speed ferry service that heads in and out of San Francisco and has a stop in San Francisco only four blocks away from our office.

That makes my commute interesting, because it's about 1.25 hours total and includes sitting on a high-speed catamaran ferry cruising across the San Francisco Bay. I sit, read the newspaper, fill out expense reports, talk on the cellphone, which makes the ostensibly long commute turn into a piece of cake and actually helps me wind down at the end of the day.

Rob: It seems like, even with all this investment in work, you're also living a life. Do you have a family? Hobbies? Do you sleep?

John: I'm very happily married (for five years this week) and have a four-year-old son. Balancing time with them and time at work isn't easy; I wish I could be both places at once. Rhonda has always supported what I do, for which I can't thank her enough, and one of the things I am learning (not easily) is that, if you can't spend as much time doing something you want to do, better to make the time you do spend count.

When I'm at home, I am learning how not to be distracted by the computer and frame relay in the office. I'm learning that even if I am totally exhausted, playing a game of "Sorry" with my son needs to come first. The best part is that I can have a bad day, come home, and the first thing that happens is my son races up and hugs me. At that point, the bad day gets a whole lot better.

It isn't easy. Work could take up my entire day (and night!); sometimes I don't make that switch and sit down at home. I've literally asked Rhonda to make me realize I am doing that so I stop myself. She hates doing it; she thinks it is nagging. But sometimes I just won't see it myself and need her to remind me.

I get home at around 6:45 pm, having spent the ride home working, in most cases. In the evening, Rhonda and Jonathan become the priority, playing baseball outside, or going out to dinner, seeing friends or barbequing.

For longer periods of time where we can manage them, I really enjoy camping, having friends over, or going over to friends' houses and just socializing or riding my motorcycle. I'm a big fan of riding a motorcycle because it makes me concentrate 100% since I usually take it on twisty roads. It really forces work out of my mind because the distraction could create unwanted results.

Rob: Does Rhonda work outside the home?

John: For the first three-quarters of 1997, which is when I started at DI, Rhonda was working as a zookeep trainer at Marine World Africa. She left and decided not to go back, but it's funny ­ it's not because I was working at a startup, it was because the work schedule she had to adhere to included weekends, so we couldn't do anything as a family on weekends.

Nowadays, she is taking care of us (Jonathan and me). Because of the startup, she is really taking care of our home and our family ­ she manages it if you will. I'm glad for that. She has been the most supporting person in my life every time I've needed it . . . and I'm not just saying that.

Rob: I notice that you're also writing articles for Webserver and occasionally teaching tutorials at conferences. How do you work all that in?

John: Traveling means plane time. I don't sleep on planes much, even on overnight flights; so I read, write, and type on the laptop. I also have that boat ride on most days of the week, and I use that time to write articles, finish my course materials, or even play solitaire. I like writing; it's work but isn't "my job." Teaching is the same way. Teaching is something I have always enjoyed doing; I taught BASIC programming when I was in middle school. I just can't be a full-time teacher, but see it more as a creative outlet that I really enjoy doing and don't want to lose.

Rob: How much teaching do you do? How much time does course development take?

John: I teach between two to five times a year (lately, two) and speak at least one to three functions a year. Part of life is participating on the technical advisory board for Finjan Inc. ­ a company which founded the Java Security Alliance (JSA) and leads the active content desktop protection market. Speaking at the JSA events and participating at the events gives me another opportunity to talk and interact with industry members.

The course development takes time, no question about it, and sometimes I don't get enough to do 100% right, especially on a new course. It will take semidaily work over a two-week period, some days one hour and some six hours. The neat part about it, though, is that when you create it the first time, it takes a lot of effort; after that, you are refining it. Sometimes that will take as much effort, but usually you feel more confident, and the changes come easier, so then it takes a lot less. It is an evolutionary process, though.

Rob: Thanks for the chat. Best of luck at Digital Island.

John: Thanks, Rob. It has been quite a ride so far.