My name is George Feil. I'm a software architect and engineer specializing in database driven Internet applications. Since 2006 I have worked exclusively in the Ruby on Rails environment. However, my travails have also involved Java, C++, and C, among others.
My career has had many interesting twists and turns. After graduating with a degree in Electrical Engineering and Mathematics from Carnegie Mellon, I wound up on the vanguard of UNIX developers transforming the IT organizations on Wall Street for such firms as Goldman Sachs, Salomon Brothers, and Sumitomo Bank Captial Markets. It's here where I mastered the art of designing and tuning relational database schemas and the applications that ran off them. Although data is the lifeblood of financial markets, and the systems I worked on were the engines circulating that blood, I came to the realization that it was the traders, bankers, and sales folks who got all the glory. I decided I'd rather work in the nucleus of an organization rather than a mere cost center. So I moved to San Francisco.
I worked on wireless data systems back in the bad old days of pager networks where the average data transfer rate was 1200 baud, and on warehouse automation before WebVan made it headline news. I dived into Web 1.0 at Egreetings, designing their order fulfillment system. Later on I worked at Skywalker Ranch building the user registration system for starwars.com. At Trapezo, I helped to design a distributed advertising content brokerage system that turned out to be a predecessor of Google's Adwords. Other companies I've been at include Ofoto, Echopass, and Real Girls Media.
Currently I'm a Principal Engineer at New Relic, disproving the myth that Rails can't scale.
