Jeff Wouters

Jeff Wouters

CTO / Lead Consultant

Methos BV

Biography

I was born and raised in The Netherlands and I’m an IT geek with a passion for automation. At the young age of 6 I had my very first computer and started developing my own Pacman in order to learn Batch programming. Looking back the performance was terrible, but it worked. Over the years I always kept in touch with some sort of scripting or programming languages, such as Batch, (Turbo) Pascal, PHP, Delphi, Kixtart, Visual Basic Scripting (VBS), VB .NET, PowerShell and C# .NET(Core). I’m the owner of Methos, a consultancy and managed services company from The Netherlands focused on the Microsoft Modern Workplace (Windows + Intune + Office365) and Azure through automation and Infrastructure-as-Code.

Interests
  • PowerShell
  • Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC)
  • CI/CD
  • Azure
  • DevOps
Education
  • Cloud Platform (Azure)

    Microsoft

  • Modern Workplace (Intune + Office365)

    Microsoft

Experience

 
 
 
 
 
Methos
Owner / CTO / Lead Consultant
November 2015 – Present The Netherlands

As the founder and technical lead of the company I am responsible for everything, but I focus on the culture and technical direction. Regarding my preferred management style, there are a guidelines I adhere to:

  1. Sometimes it’s the little things that matter. Someone’s father was rushed to the hospital, their car broke down, they came back from vacation, when they just bought a house or it’s their birthday. Send a cake/pie when someone has a birthday, send a post card when someone has a birthday or bought a house, or call them when they had unplanned work in the weekend and thank them for their work and ask them how they’re doing. People tend to appreciate this, and it takes little effort to do it.

  2. Learn when to listen and when to respond. Sometimes people come to me with their problems or challenges. But not always they want me to provide a solution. Sometimes they just want to vent.

  3. Learn to delegate. There are only so many hours in a day, and days in a week. So in order to do more than you can accomplish just on your own, you’ll need to delegate. Next to this, your employees/colleagues will probably value your trust and answer with their respect, or even loyalty.

When it comes to fostering the culture of the company, here are the phrases that I try to always adhere by:

  1. Anything can be discussed, even passionately, but always respectfully. Try to respect the opinions, views and points of others, or at least understand them. You don’t have to agree with them, naturally. But a bit of understanding goes a long way.

  2. Know your limits, and learn those of others. When you know your limits, you know where to invest for growth but also when and what what to delegate.

  3. Think before you act. Don’t make hasty decisions, and especially not led by emotions. Take your time, and don’t ever let external factors make you decide when you’re not ready to make a decision. If there’s ever a customer or colleague that tries to force you to make a hasty decision, chances are you’ll end up drawing the short straw.

 
 
 
 
 
eVision Industry Software
Infrastructure DevOps Lead
August 2014 – December 2014 The Hague
Since this was a very interesting position, but the customer didn’t hire externally, I decided to be employed again. After putting things on track and setting up a long term roadmap, my job was done and I left.
 
 
 
 
 
Consultant
July 2011 – January 2012 Veenendaal
For various customers of my employer I’ve implemented Hyper-V clusters, implemented and troubleshooted most of the System Center and Citrix products.
 
 
 
 
 
InterAccess
System Engineer
January 2011 – June 2011 Hilversum
Sequencing about 140 applications with App-V for 4 months at a customer’s site for a project. For a second customer I was part of the team which handled to operational issues, like server deployment/configuration, solving incidents and general infrastructure problems. I had a personal project to solve issues on about 15 database clusters, based on the Windows Server 2003 (R2) platform with SQL Server and Oracle on it. The issues included unexplainable failovers, resources that could not come online on specific nodes, time skew errors, kerberos errors, etc.
 
 
 
 
 
McGregor Fashion Group
System Administrator
April 2010 – August 2010 Driebergen
MFG hired me to fix and optimize their Citrix/RES environment, where lots of performance challenges and not working applications were considered normal.
 
 
 
 
 
RES Software
Support Engineer
May 2009 – April 2010 California
This is where I learned two very valuable things, where the first was troubleshooting. Because RES’ products were so intertwined in the Windows desktop and user experience, proper troubleshooting was a must.
 
 
 
 
 
Local/Remote Support Engineer
April 2009 – June 2010 Naarden
Local and remote support, sometimes team lead, for various customers of my employer. Customers: ROC Midden Nederland, ROC ASA Amsterdam, Icare Healthcare, Teijin Aramid / Teijin Twaron and Grontmij.

Accomplish­ments

Microsoft MVP
Microsoft awarded me at first in the category of Windows PowerShell later some categories were merged and became Cloud & Datacenter Management. The Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award is given by Microsoft to technology experts who passionately share their knowledge with the community. They are awarded to people who actively share their technical expertise with different technology communities related directly or indirectly to Microsoft1. The MVP recognition lasts for a year and is awarded for a person’s Microsoft related activity, contributions, and influence over the previous year1. MVPs are not just technological experts with a deep understanding of Microsoft products and services. They’re also community leaders; someone who avidly shares their knowledge with the community, displaying exceptional leadership and a constant willingness to help others. They are always on the “bleeding edge” and have an unstoppable urge to get their hands on new, exciting technologies3. In summary, being an MVP means a lot of passion to share knowledge and engage with the tech community.
See certificate
Microsoft MCT
Microsoft Certified Trainers (MCTs) are the premier technical and instructional experts in Microsoft technologies. They are part of an esteemed group of worldwide Microsoft training professionals. To become a Microsoft Certified Trainer, you need to earn an approved Microsoft Certification validating your experience and knowledge for each course you deliver. The Microsoft Certified Trainer program is an annual membership program. You must meet program requirements, complete an online application, and pay an annual fee to renew your training certification for the coming year. As an MCT, you’ll enjoy exclusive benefits including access to the complete library of official Microsoft training and certification products, substantial discounts on exams, books, and Microsoft products. You’ll also have access to Microsoft readiness resources to help enhance your training career and engage with other MCT members in an online forum. You’ll also be invited to exclusive Microsoft and local MCT community events. The MCT program is for educators around the world who deliver training on Microsoft technologies. If you have a qualifying certification and are passionate about training others on Microsoft technologies, you’ll be a great MCT.

Blog

Not yet ;-)

Working on a completely new blog site, I hope to have it online soon!

Projects

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PSScriptAnalyzerRules
A set of custom rules for the PowerShell Script Analyzer.
PSScriptAnalyzerRules
TrellOps
TrellOps is a PowerShell module for managing Trello.
TrellOps

Gallery

Some pictures of me ‘in action’ ;-)

Contact

It can be about something practical, fun, crazy, business or even all of the above ;-)

Want to contact me? There are several ways, please choose the one(s) appropriate for you.