For seven years, Rob Olmos has played a vital role in developing and maintaining EnderTech's infrastructure and operations. He manages the human and technological resources that keep EnderTech's hosting and office infrastructures humming. And as if that weren't enough responsibility, he's a kick @!! software developer too.

Daily, Rob is supporting his colleagues and EnderTech's clients in their pursuit of excellent web-based IT systems. He can regularly be seen peering out over four monitors that are chock full with a half dozen bash shells, a couple of IDE's, a few apps, the Internet, Linux, Java, PHP and everything that stacks on top of that.

In Rob's own words:

I got into programming by starting to hack computers while I was in middle school. I'd find exploits posted online and run them to expose vulnerabilities in websites. I was using other people's scripts and didn't like being referred to as a “script kiddie” by other hackers. I became determined to learn how to program so I could write my own exploits and not be viewed as or feel like a phony. Everything I learned was from books or from someone else detailing their work process online. Once I was able to write my own scripts, I moved on to learning more programming languages. My dad was taking some technical classes and needed help with his homework so I learned PHP, SQL, and started dabbling in Linux. I took classes on Networking and read about Cisco Networking Systems. I attempted to create a new Student Council computer voting system for my high school.

My Computer teacher invited a local web development company (Gabe from EnderTech) to come and speak to our class. I was the only one in the class who was interested in what Gabe presented to our class, and I guess that made quite an impression on him. The following summer, I worked as an intern for EnderTech setting up a file server for the company. Gabe was so impressed with me that he offered me a job right out of high school, and seven years later I'm still here.

I joined EnderTech for 2 primary reasons: I got paid more than I did working at El Pollo Loco to work on computers and programming, and it meant I didn't have to go to college. Some of the best coders I've known never went to college and I feel I wouldn't have learned as much had I gone.

I like working on every project. I think every project has a unique challenge to it and conquering challenges is what I do best. It's what I live for. The smaller projects have the challenge of trying to complete them faster and more efficiently. I like the business challenge of the smaller projects. Also, most of the projects I work on, I have to manage developers, which I enjoy more than the actual hands-on coding.

Three things everyone should know about me:
1. I wear a ponytail because it's “techy”.
2. I divided by zero and lived to tell about it.
3. El Pollo Loco is delicious.