Doug Whateley has spent more than two decades deep in the world of IT infrastructure, network troubleshooting, and security operations. He’s the kind of engineer who still prefers a good command line to a flashy GUI and believes that half of good troubleshooting comes down to paying attention.

Starting his career in helpdesk support, Doug worked his way up through the ranks, from pulling cable in server rooms to leading incident response teams during major network outages. Eventually he found himself a network engineer, and the role stuck.Over the years, he’s managed complex environments across public sector organizations, universities, and private companies, always keeping one foot in the weeds of technical work and the other in strategy.

He’s happiest when solving hard problems, mentoring younger engineers, or hanging out with his dog R2, who he gets to see a lot more ever since he started working from home.

This site is his way of documenting lessons learned, sharing hard-won insights, and laughing at the messy, brilliant, frustrating world of IT.