Meet a Helpful Human – Matt Healey

We’re the employees you would hire if you could. Responsive, helpful, and dedicated in ways automation simply can’t be. We’re your team.

Each month we recognize one of our Most Helpful Humans in Hosting™.

Meet Matt Healey

Matt Healey, one of our best and brightest at Liquid Web, takes on the challenge daily of helping customers with complex infrastructure builds. As a Solutions Architect, Matt helps corporate entities with new infrastructure setups, redesigns, upgrades, and special projects. He also helps to train others at Liquid Web about the intricacies of simple and complex infrastructure builds, distilling these ideas into fundamental and easily-digestible building blocks of knowledge.

We sat down with Matt as he explained exactly why he loves working at Liquid Web.

Why did you join Liquid Web?

I’ve always been passionate about technology from an early age. I’ve been actively working on computers since the earliest that I can recall, doing things like playing Doom on my dad’s computer while standing on a swivel chair, to first installing Ubuntu on my first laptop after I bricked my Windows install. I just knew a tech career was something I felt destined to have. It was in my DNA.

Once I found out about Liquid Web in high school, I knew this was somewhere I would want to have a career at and make a difference. I applied shortly after getting my high school diploma and A+ Certification from Comptia.

What draws you to the hosting industry as a career?

For me, it’s always been about one word: innovation. The constant evolution for the latest-and-greatest hardware and software that exists in the hosting world is a great thing to be a part of.

What’s your favorite part about the company culture at Liquid Web?

You can always rely on your teammates to have your back. My team is quite small, only consisting of four people, including our manager. As such, keeping an eye out for one another has been crucial to our success as a team. For example, I recently took a week off to work on some home renovation projects that were in dire need of attention. Without even needing to ask, my teammates helped carry my work to the finish line and made sure they were implemented properly. This was not only helpful personally, but also made sure that our new customers were brought into Liquid Web in an expeditious manner.

Also, our team’s ability to get different department teams together and work on solutions for potential and current customers is fantastic and fulfilling. As with all environments, there can be healthy competition and even disagreements on the best path forward, but at the end of the day, you can always trust your teammates to help out. Everyone is here for the same reason: to become an even more Helpful Human.

In your eyes, what’s the difference between Liquid Web and other employers?

It’s hard to find an organization with a culture that doesn’t make employees feel as if they are only a means to meet a bottom line. Liquid Web is one of those rare places that truly cares, and the culture reflects that. Every single person, from the executive team to our customer-facing colleagues, cares about what they do and is actively making a difference for our customers and each other.

Also, I love my colleagues and the work ethic everyone brings to the table. It’s a great culture of helpfulness, and an easy place to grow your knowledge about the Hosting Industry. I’ve met quite a few people here that I consider to be true friends, and that’s hard to beat. Most companies are check-the-box kinds of cultures that leave employees with talents and potential untapped. That’s simply not the case at Liquid Web.

What is the biggest milestone you’ve accomplished?

My biggest milestone while at Liquid Web has been becoming a Solutions Architect. I didn’t realize it at first, but the position fits with my personality perfectly. While I am a “techie” at heart, I am also a very social person. I love problem solving and being able to apply my technical knowledge to complex solutions. Being able to identify and provide optimal hardware recommendations is truly one of the things I was made to do.

Being at a company that can place you in a position that fits at a personal and professional level is truly rewarding and quite unique.

Tell us about a truly rewarding experience you’ve had with a customer.

The most rewarding opportunities are ones where you can see measurable and notable improvements to people’s lives. During my time here, I’ve worked with quite a few public entities, including education, transit, and hospitals. In my role as a Solutions Architect, I am able to learn about the environment, application, and current issues they’re having and how we can resolve it.

Due to the nature of these businesses, any issues can seriously impact people’s daily lives. A public transit system going down might mean that somebody is unable to make it to work. A hospital’s systems going down might mean somebody isn’t able to get the care they need in a timely manner. By redesigning or updating infrastructure for these organizations, I can assist in making sure systems remain online and running smoothly.

Indirectly, ensuring infrastructure is running well means that I’ve helped a lot of people’s lives run more harmoniously, and that makes me happy.

What is one thing you wish our customers knew about their hosting?

I wish all customers knew about the need for highly available infrastructure. I remember one potential client of mine had over an entire week of downtime after their in-house server that was running their business-critical virtual machines died. It didn’t take long after they recovered from that catastrophe to start looking into high availability hosting at a data center.

For most businesses, downtime isn’t acceptable. High availability could take that downtime and completely mitigate it so your customers never notice that anything was amiss. Liquid Web has plenty of ways to make applications and websites highly available and fault tolerant.

Work aside, what are some of your hobbies?

I love tabletop games, video games, and various crafting hobbies. Specifically, I play role playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons, Paranoia, or the Witcher franchise. I also love Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Nintendo Gamecube. It still surprises me to this day that this game has such a large and amazing following.

You can follow Matt Healey on LinkedIn.

We hope you enjoyed our series, and stay tuned for the next Most Helpful Human in Hosting profile.