Matt's career path

Matt Raible: First of all, I would be pissed off that I have a Volkswagen Bus instead of a Lamborghini! When I was in my 20s, I wanted to be a Russian stockbroker. If you think about it, that's probably the most stressful job possible! I kind of am an international businessman with developer advocacy.

I studied Russian, international business, and Japanese, but I had student loans and I needed to get paid well as soon as I graduated. I had friends who were doing computer science and they were getting really good job offers. I started auditing computer programming classes and teaching myself.

I wasn't doing anything like real programming, but I ended up getting a job doing Year 2000 (Y2K) consulting. Then I got into HTML and Java and really enjoyed it. When I'm coding and I'm solving a problem or developing something new, I just love it. Back then, I would have thought that it's awesome that I actually get paid now to...