Matthew David Rodgers

02/24/2022

I'm joining Cloudflare!

If you’re been reading the logs at all recently, you may have noticed a repeated focus on Cloudflare and their platform. Well, astute reader, maybe you figured it out first, but, I am indeed focusing on my new employer!

Dropping hints I’m joining Cloudflare

After a very long process– nine interviews, over a month from first interview to offer– I’m joining Cloudflare as a Systems Engineer on the Workers team.

When I started looking for the next step in my career, I decided that I’d swing for the fences first. I’d go straight for the companies that I thought were doing the most interesting work on the web, and where I’d also have an opportunity to work on real systems engineering: problems at scale, where every byte counts, and close to the operating system.

I knew that it was setting my sights fairly high. But I wanted to really go for it before I started applying to roles that I knew would be an easy fit. And when I talked to my friends about it, I had in my head some sort of web infrastructure company. And the first company on that list was always Cloudflare.

So to be heading to Cloudflare at the beginning of next month is nothing short of a home run!

I’m really excited about my team; to me, Cloudflare Workers represent the most interesting application of serverless architectures yet. Sure, conceptually, the idea of abstracting everything away except code is a very exciting innovation in cloud computing. But what truly sets Cloudflare’s platform apart is the global network that it sits on.

Cloudflare says that 95% of internet users are within 50ms of latency to one of their servers, and every single one of those servers hosts the Workers runtime. Your code can be milliseconds away from users, without any of the hassle of managing client-side code OR the distributed architecture. It’s not just serverless, it’s edge computing.

It’s a big platform, with eventually consistent data stores, strongly consistent stores, and an up and coming S3 compatible blob store– not to mention the V8 runtime for the Workers itself. I’m unsure of where I’m going to fit in best, but I’m over the moon at this new opportunity.

There’s much more to come, I’m sure!