Welcoming Josh Alletto as Senior Technical Content Engineer

The team at Earthly is growing quickly and Josh Alletto is our latest hire. He’ll be coming onboard as Senior Technical Content Engineer to help us continue to grow our blog. I sat down with him to ask some questions about his background and what brought him to Earthly.

What is Your Origin Story? When Did You First Get Interested in Software Development?

I did not start out with a technical background. I was a literature major in college. I started teaching writing courses in grad school and continued to teach high school and college level writing for about ten years. In my spare time I started to do some coding as a hobby. I didn’t really have an end goal in mind, I wasn’t trying to build a business or automate something, I was just really curious about how things worked. Eventually I started to wonder if I could actually make some money with these new skills. Turns out the answer was yes, and compared to teaching, the answer was hell yes. I ended up going to a coding boot camp that no longer exists. I’ve been working in tech ever since.

I still love sharing knowledge, so even though I’ve changed careers, I try to keep some kind of teaching in my life. I’ve taught at coding boot camps, created technical curriculum and I regularly write about new things I’ve learned.

What Made You Interested in Earthly?

A friend told me about Earthly and how they were looking to hire a technical content engineer. I was working in DevOps at the time, but I had been doing a lot of technical writing on the side. Because I came from a job where we had been working heavily with CI/CD tools to create build pipelines, I immediately understood the power of a tool like Earthly.

What Unique Perspectives Does Your Background Give You When Writing About Software Development?

My teaching background really helps me as a developer. I need to learn new things quickly, and I often need to explain complex topics succinctly. These are both skills I learned teaching.

I also think the fact that I don’t come from a technical background helps me bring a different perspective. There are a lot of times it has been a weakness for me, but I’ve learned to see it as a positive. When you’re trying to teach someone something either in person or in a tutorial, it’s important to remember what it was like to be in the learner’s shoes. In a lot of ways I’m still really close to that learner mindset, and I understand what it feels like to be overwhelmed by how much you don’t know.

What Interests You Most About a Technical Communication Role?

My answer for this one is pretty simple: I love writing, teaching, and learning. A technical writing position gives me the chance to alternate between those roles on a regular basis.

Welcome to the Team

Keep a look out for Josh’s writing here on the Earthly blog in the coming weeks. He’s already hard at work on a few tutorials and articles. We look forward to having him as part of the Earthly team moving forward.