Meet the team: JJ Monserat

We thought it would be interesting to run some blogs about the super people at Cloudhouse. We’re speaking to people across all our teams to find out a bit more about them, what their role is and what makes them tick. We also ask them for their thoughts on AI and all about their biggest IT fail! 

Meet… JJ Monserat, Professional Services Consultant

When did you join Cloudhouse?

Almost 5 years ago now, I joined in 2018. 

Tell us a little about your career up to this point:

So before Cloudhouse, I worked in desktop service and infrastructure support for about 15 years. I’ve always worked for small businesses, in fact, the first company I worked for only consisted of 2 men in a small company in Camden [North London]. 

What do you do at Cloudhouse?

I work on the Alchemy side of things, specifically on the team that helps customers migrate their old applications from outdated servers to new operating systems, with the aim of making sure they can still use their applications just like they used to.

What’s the best thing about working at Cloudhouse?

I know everyone has said this, but it really is the people. Everyone is really welcoming and extremely helpful and you never feel awkward asking questions. I’ve ended up with some strong relationships with the people I work with and actually socialise with them outside of the working week. 

What do you get the most satisfaction from in your role?

I’m a troubleshooter at heart, so I’ve always liked problem-solving and fixing issues. It’s really satisfying knowing you have fixed something in a week that a customer has been trying to fix for 3 years. Alchemy is quite a niche product so a lot of the time a customer has been struggling to find anyone to solve their issue and it feels great to be able to provide them with a solution. 

A lot of the time in support roles, it can feel like a never-ending battle where things are constantly going wrong, but at Cloudhouse and with Alchemy once a project is finished, tested and signed off it’s done and it feels like a big win.

Most embarrassing IT moment (e.g. hitting reply all when you really shouldn’t have, deleting something VERY important, leaving your laptop on the train…) 

I graduated as a web developer, so when I took my first job in the small company I mentioned earlier my role was to develop websites. Anyway, I updated a particular client’s website and when I went to test it, I forgot to switch from cc to bcc so it exposed the entire mailing list, as you can imagine, they weren’t very happy.

What’s your view on AI? Friend or foe?

In theory, it’s a friend but it also has the potential to be quite terrifying. I find the image generation stuff particularly crazy; it can generate anything you type in in 30 seconds – a minute.

As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

A hairy footballer. I managed to do one of those things… (spoiler alert, it wasn’t to become a footballer)

What would you choose as your last meal?

Katsu curry.

Is a Jaffa cake a biscuit or a cake?

It’s got to be a cake.

If you had a choice between being able to fly or being invisible, which would you choose?

Flying – anything to avoid the London rush hour. 

Cats or dogs?

Dogs