#295 Elise Carmichael has a challenges-driven career

And so you get stuck in this thing where you're kind of afraid to move because you don't know about it . But if you just sort of close your eyes and leap over , you're not going to do anything else but learn about that , because that's what your time is now dedicated to . So that's how I do it .

And then , once you're in that place , it's easy enough to YouTube , Google , read a book . So there's tons of ways to actually figure it out once you're there .

Elise has over 20 years of experience working on high tech , big data and machine learning based products in various roles , spanning from software developer and software tester to VP of product strategy and CTO , as in her current role at Lakeside . Elise , welcome to DevTourney .

If you would like to join this fine crew and help me spend more time on finding phenomenal guests than editing audio tracks , please go to our website , devjourneyinfo and click on the support me on Patreon button . Even the smallest contributions are giant steps toward a sustainable DevTourney journey . Thank you , and now back to today's guest , elise .

As you know , the show exists to help the listeners understand what your story looked like and imagine how to shape their own future . So , as usual on the show , let's go back to your beginnings . Where would you place the start of your DevTourney ?

And so , yeah , yeah , so she used punch cards and had an opportunity to work on these you know giant room computers . And so I grew up with a very high tech household . We had all the Atari's , we had Commodore's , so we had all the iterations after the Commodore , but the Commodore was my first computer . So I absolutely love this thing from .

You know , I was in the single digits when I had this and I remember we would get this Commodore 64 magazine . It came every month in the mail and as part of the magazine it had you know how to program games , but it wasn't really programming . You would type in numbers and it did this magical thing you got to the end of the line .

It would tell you if your numbers were correct , which I had at the time . No idea how it could possibly know that , but it had to be some sort of hash . You know , looking , looking back in time , and you finished . You know typing in pages and pages of teeny tiny numbers and out came a game or out came something . So I thought that was amazing .

But what really blew my mind was I was sitting there with my I have two older brothers . I was sitting there with my brothers , five years older than me , and I figured out how to write from the command prompt on the Commodore a while loop , and in the while loop I wrote out something to the effective , you know a print statement .

My brother is a meanie head or something you know like a seven year old would write . And so it just starts printing out something mean about my brother and I was sold and I was like this is the greatest thing I've ever done . This is the biggest accomplishment of my life . I built that and I was totally hooked on technology after that .

So it started very early for me .

So this was maybe a ninth grade , you know , in four years left in high school and then I knew I wanted to do something with music . So really I wanted to be a musician , but I knew that I didn't want to be a poor musician or struggling musician . So the computers was obviously going to be my day job and I'll do music for fun .

So yeah , I knew pretty early that this was going to be my career in some capacity . I didn't know what with computers , but I knew something with computers . So I've stuck to that pretty , pretty darn well .

Once I found out what the software folks at Pixar did , which was create all the software that the actual designers of the movie and you know , the graphics would do , I was a little less interested in it . It seemed like a lot of math and I thought maybe that wasn't actually for me .

So we had this great program . My freshman year was the first full class of a computer science program . It was math before that , but they decided they had this whole computer science building and so it was somewhat glamorous . You know , it was kind of the first first seventh degree in there , about 30 to 40 kids in my program . So it wasn't that big .

But I knew that's why I wouldn't do . I played the flute on the side as a music performance major and I still play , but it's not , it's not professional , it's just for fun . So I did that throughout college and I took internships and things like that because I always wanted more .

I loved my classes , I love doing programming assignments , and so I always had Something going on on the side , even if it was like an IT help desk internship or if it was a programming thing or something for the college over the summer I did .

I Probably can't even tell you how many internships I did , because it was always like a three-month thing here and there . I enjoyed that .

Um , but my first job that was full-time was not really what I anticipated and I didn't go after what everyone else went after . So a lot of my Um friends from college went to Silicon Valley . They went to glamorous jobs at as consultants and they got paid quite a bit of money . I , on the other hand , met a boy .

And I decided I was going to move to Florida and so I looked for whatever computer jobs I could find in Gainesville , florida , which is where I live . So it's Um , a small college town in the middle of Florida . It's not near anything . I'm not near a beach , I'm not near Disney , I'm two hours away from anything you can imagine here . I'm nowhere near Miami .

Um , so I I went what's what's in Gainesville ? So I looked and applied for basically every job I could find . I looked at like the chamber of commerce website , like the government website , to see what , even what , what companies could even exist there .

Um , and I finally found a job at a blood bank , um , you know , like , kind of like the red cross , but A smaller version in the southeastern us . So I took a job in their , their IT department . It was pretty small , maybe 25 people . I was the only only woman there .

Um , and I was a software developer , slash test automation engineer , and it was not at all what I pig pictured . It was kind of a cube farm . Um , we wrote software for the blood intake process .

So someone comes in they say I want to donate blood and you have to fill out forms , and it would used to all be manual by hand , and so we made a computer program that was , um , all kinds of HIPAA compliant and you know very much in the healthcare space , because someone's putting in their name and their medical history and and all that .

So we worked on this intake form and it was Not the most pleasant work environment for me , um , I probably have stories for for days , um , but it was a very interesting job . So after Three months of being there , I'm a 22 year old Kid straight out of college . After three months of being there , my boss promoted me to a manager role .

I managed something like five people .

Uh , there was someone in their 40s , other people kind of in their mid upper 20s , um , and it was a super awkward position for me because I didn't know anything about managing people , um , and the only reason or at least what I assume is the reason that I was offered this role is because I could translate what we were doing From a tech perspective Into what

my boss cared about , which I now know , of course , is managing up , and there's a whole art to managing up , um , but apparently I did that naturally , um , because why else would he give a 22 year old with no other prior full-time experience a manager role Three months after starting in a new position in a new industry .

He thought I was responsible , I was always on time and , um , it was a very , um , very lockdown place when you know , some of the the folks to my team would go to espancom and they were monitored and so they would block websites if you went to certain websites . So it was a very toxic place . So you know , it wasn't .

It wasn't the greatest experience for me . I didn't stay there for super long . However , having that experience becoming a manager , of course I'm gonna take very seriously and try to understand all the things that I don't know anything about I am actually .

My next job in technology was following one of the people that I managed to another company , so is how I found out about my next tech job .

I had other experiences of being the only woman there where people kind of treated me in a not super pleasant way when they found out I had a boyfriend , and it was a little toxic for multiple reasons . Yeah , I wanted to go to med school wow .

So at that point I was like software is not for me , this is not for me . Everywhere can't be like this . So I actually took a job at a doctor's office . I learned how to draw blood and help with minor procedures and was a medical assistant in the family practice office while I was taking pre med courses at local school in florida .

This company is a company called info tech Not the big info tech in india , but a local , florida info tech and this person that I worked with said what absolutely love working . There was a wonderful place .

It was nothing like where we had worked before , and I heard someone come to the doctor's office saying that they work there and I overheard this conversation . So me being the super shy person that I am , I walked up to them and was like who are you ? What do you do there ? You know , tell me more about yourself . I do . You know this person ?

I know this person . They said it's great , turns out she was the head of hr there and said that there were a couple open positions and that I should come back and come back into tech and apply form . So I said what the heck ? I had an interview , phone interview , maybe . A couple of days later they said come on in for an in person interview .

In fact , there's two different jobs open . Why don't you interview for both of them and at this point I've been out of writing code for I don't know you're gonna have because I was pursuing this other side thing , because I thought technology was just so toxic and terrible everywhere . So I show up for the interview . It went really well .

I got offered both jobs . They said , pick whichever one you want . It was for , you know , hundred and forty percent pay raise from what I was making previously and I said , okay , well , this sounds great .

I maybe , I'll , maybe I'll hop back in here and , to be fair , after working at doctors office dealing with health insurance companies and the general population , I thought maybe I gotta give technology another chance . I did pretty well .

So I took a job at this company , info tech , and stay there for about six years and worked in different roles , but I started out writing code . I really love the team I worked with . Software we are working on is really interesting , even though it was in the construction management space , which doesn't scream interesting .

But I learned a lot about that industry and so when you learn about industry it's always kind of interesting . So much you don't know I can tell you now . You know how much it cost to build a road and all the components I go into building a road really interesting .

This is what I love about technology , and so I have not jumped career paths since I was quite a while ago , but that was . That was a really big deal to me . I'm still friends with with many of the people that I work with .

I visited my first customer on site and I really enjoyed traveling and visiting customer and talking to them and it's always different seeing your software in the real world with a real user than sitting at your desk and I thought that that just gives you kind of an extra feeling of accomplishment .

And I built this , I worked on this , I know how it works , I can answer any question that they're going to throw at me , and so that that was great .

And then I also learned that I liked having an opinion on what we built , not just being handed what we were built , and that those two things have really shaped a lot of the different paths that I've gone on .

Although I'm the the CTO at my current company , I'm responsible for the engineering and delivery of the product , but also I run the product organization , so that groups kind of deciding what you're building , and I'm also running security , I'm also running cloud and there's a reason that I feel comfortable in all of those areas and it's really due to kind of a

varied career that I have leading up to that .

I only know enough to draw boxes , arrows , architecture diagrams high level of these are where the pieces connect . I can identify the right problems and understand what they're talking to me about , versus necessarily saying this is how we should build our , you know , cloud architecture . I don't know the best practices and everything everywhere , by any means .

We had note cards that we wrote our quasi user stories on . We drew lines on a giant whiteboard that had our names for who who had what ticket and then you would move the tickets long and I always wanted to rip up the ticket when we were done because it was a feeling of accomplishment , but my product owner wanted to keep them .

I remember having a like a end of year review with my boss , who at the time was that product owner , and he was like you know , where do you see yourself in a couple years , five years , something like that and I told him I would like his job , which I thought would go over great , and I thought he would be flattered .

I don't think he was that flat , I comment , but I just thought you know , I really like that , the concept of product , and although I didn't go straight there , after this I did have an opportunity to lead one of the products at that company . I still had a product owner , but I had a lot more influence over what we built and how we built it .

So I kind of started running the whole product and being responsible for delivery of that product . So that was kind of my final role at that company .

I understand you fully . So what decided you to leave this company ? If you were in such a right place ?

I didn't send a resume and I just talked to her and was like , can I , can I go apply for that ? And so the next company I worked for , they found me on LinkedIn . I said , sure , I'll interview . It was in . I know about trucking , so it was in the trucking industry , so I know about logistics and trucking and it was really purely for money .

They paid me quite a bit more money and I didn't think my other company would match and I thought I'd been there six years . Let's break out of my comfort zone , do something brand new that I don't know anything about , because that's been my other MO throughout my careers to take on something that is harder than what I'm doing or more unknown .

So I worked at that trucking company for a while and then , kind of the next big thing that happened in my career is I get a phone call from a gentleman named Daniel Cohen and he was running engineering at a professional services company called Mope Equity and they specialized in mobile app development , which I had no experience in , and responsive web apps , which

I had no experience in , and Alexa skills was their other big thing . So he said I want you to come work for Mope Equity . We're building an office in Gainesville . And I said you don't have an office area . I don't know , I have a small child . That seems kind of risky . Maybe I'll think about it . So I didn't take it right away . But he kept pestering me .

He and someone in their HR team kept pestering me in a good way and finally I said OK , ok , let's , let's talk again . They had started opening the office and he asked me to run a program at that company called on ramp .

So it was something that Daniel had just kind of come up with and it was a training program for new software developers and testers who were straight out of college or had done a boot camp and could pass a very difficult interview , and the program would basically teach you how to build software on the team for a large organization .

So we would put together these small teams and work for a CVS or work for the weather channel or name brand companies that people have heard of . So I said , ok , I've never done any kind of training before . I don't think I've ever done any public speaking before . That sounds terrifying . I don't have any idea what I don't know about all of this .

Sign me up . That sounds great . So I started at this company running this training program that he had started and I also did . I would hire people to come in and teach how to program in Objective C and then Swift later for iOS , because that was not a skill set that I was an expert in .

But we would actually go hire people who were absolute experts in it and pay them a crazy amount of money to come in for three weeks to leave whatever they were doing for three weeks , to basically live in Gainesville and teach this . We did the same for Android .

I taught the software test one because I knew a lot about software testing and test automation , so I taught that one . I ran a bunch of these programs . I ran in India one time , so I was in India for like a month , and so it was completely different than what I've been doing , and while I was there I also changed roles multiple times .

I started taking over projects if they were on fire , because I really liked working with the customers I found out . I really liked working with angry customers . For some awful reason , I just wanted to make them our biggest fans . You know , hey , you're really angry about how this project's going . Let me take it over . I have your back , I'm going to help you .

And I just over communicated with them . I would tell them no , we're not going to do that , that's not what your statement of work says . And then I ultimately took over QA . I took over engineering . I eventually took Daniel's job when he left the organization , so that was a very eye opening company .

I stayed there for quite a while and had lots of experiences in different industries . From working on healthcare software , which has its own kind of compliance , I worked on the first FDA approved mobile app , which was kind of interesting , so it actually delivered medicine via an app .

I don't think it was , in the public , super well received because it was scary , sort of like a self driving car was . You know , I don't trust this thing , but it was a very , very interesting experience getting to work with all these different types of companies and different industries .

So that role was very much . Daniel was a great mentor to me and he was very motivating . He knew that someone with my background could figure that out and I think he really helped push me in that direction .

That was such a big deal to me and throughout my career there he always pushed me into things and I think I really appreciated that and I've taken that with me everywhere I've been since in every role and what I encourage my team members to do .

So I saw one entire we called them classes of students I saw them go through this whole program one time and then I was basically on my own . After there was an area that I knew well , but not extremely well . So one area was Git . It was still relatively new I suppose at the time .

Git is relatively new still , but it was something I was teaching everyone and I really needed to understand it inside and out , like how does it work , so I could answer all these questions that all these technical folks are going to ask me about it , and so that was the kind of thing . So I just practiced a lot on my own because I knew I could learn it .

But it wasn't something I knew . But I wasn't going to say no just because I don't know that one technology . So same thing with any technology I've needed to learn in my career I'll figure it out , and I always do or did .

Those are the people you can push because you know that they are problem solvers . They're not just going to say , oh , there's no documentation and then like , move on and complain about it . The people that are problem solvers , that want to better everything around them , or they see a gap in a process and they say , what if we do it this way ?

And they bring it up and it's never , you know , it's someone else's problem . It's like you know who is responsible for that ? Oh , there's no one responsible for that . Why don't I do that ?

Those are the people that you just see their careers take off , and a lot of the people who went through this on-ramp program at Mobiquity went the extra mile to find a company that did this training program where you had homework , and it was a very challenging program .

It lasted seven weeks or you would find people that changed careers , went through this boot camp and we picked certain boot camps that were like longer boot camps , that were immersive boot camps , so they really , like you could tell they wanted to do this .

One person , for example , came who's a general contractor , so he was in construction and it's like I'm going to learn how to do Android development . Yeah , so he comes and does this program and it is so amazing to see how successful this group of people who went through this training program are today .

It's been , you know , one of those kind of life changing things . Every time I think about it .

So they all had their regression tests and their smoke tests . So it wasn't tracked super well before this and you wanted to be able to send what testing you had done to the customer so they could feel confident in what they did .

So Q-Test was run by a company called QI Symphony and they were based in Atlanta and I guess at that time was one of their bigger customers . So they had asked me hey , can you speak at our conference ? And I'd never done a conference talk before , so of course I'd go . Yes , that sounds great , I have no idea what I'm doing .

And I went and spoke at their conference about how to do testing for mobile devices and how we store that data in Q-Test , and so the talk went really well and it was their first user conference .

So it was a relatively young company still and they had like an after party after the event and I went to the party at the Spurri and ended up meeting the founders of the company and the CEO of the company .

The CEO's name was Dave Kyle and I told Dave probably after a couple of drinks when I was even more outgoing than maybe I normally am that I really liked the product , I thought I had tons of potential and then I was going to come work for him one day . So maybe three or four months later I sent him a message .

Professional services is a very challenging industry . It's just constantly moving , there's constant fires and things going on because there's so many projects . So it's a very difficult industry to be in . And although I do really like it , I missed product companies and so I called him up one day and said okay , what do you have , what do you have going for me ?

And so he flew me out . Maybe a week later I interviewed from when I landed in Atlanta , which was like 7 am , so I had like a breakfast meeting and , fun fact , I had the founder of the company , who owns another company as well , show up as my first interviewee and I wasn't expecting it .

He wasn't on my schedule and he said Dave said I could talk to you if it doesn't work out at QA Symphony . And so he interviewed me for a role at his company who I'd met him . The same night I met Dave , so I thought that was amazing . I felt like a million bucks after that . So I interviewed all the way through dinner .

So I had a breakfast , lunch and dinner there , Flew home that night and they gave me a job offer for this VP of QA role , which was actually a subject matter expert role . Plus I was running QA at the company , which you know the small companies , really small , relatively small team and so that's when I started getting into product .

So I spent most of my time there with the product team and saying this is what we should build or this is how we should build it , and I started learning about the product side of the world and then took over the product team while I was there . So that's how I really got fully into kind of the product side .

It was very strange not being as close to the code , but I did work with the engineering team quite a bit while I was there .

I have seen , like like where I am now , it does sometimes work better when they're together . It kind of depends on the product a little bit . But then try , try sent us and QA Symphony merged , so I went through a merger and then I was running product strategy and we had people .

We had some duplicate roles and so I ended up being an evangelist for the company , which was basically was doing tons of public speaking engagements , which I still don't like , and yet I still do them . But I did a lot of traveling and speaking on behalf and I also helped run the go to market activities for the Q test products still .

So after the merger I was in charge of making sure the sales team knew what they were doing . The marketing team was talking about the right stuff . So I really started getting much more involved in the business side of how to sell software , and so I spent a lot of time at QA Symphony and at Tricentus learning about that .

I went to another software testing company after that that did test automation with machine learning and AI . So I got much more . I was more educated in kind of the machine learning space . I realized I didn't know as much as I would have liked to know , so I spent a lot of time researching that .

And then Dave comes to a new company called Lakeside and I joined back at Lakeside , which is where I am now . So that's kind of my whole full circle . I loved working for Dave and so I thought it was a great opportunity I knew he was looking at coming to Lakeside . I loved it was a big data company and I thought , oh , there's tons of opportunity .

You have all this data . Look at all this machine learning we can do on this . Having data is gold right now . So I was just really excited to work on a product that's in the IT space so a technical product is kind of my sweet spot and then getting to run engineering when I first started . And then I took over a product about six months ago .

I know there's application owners , but I don't really understand or I didn't Now I do I didn't really understand how that part of large organizations was set up . So I always worked kind of on the engineering and new product development side . So that was my I don't know what I'm doing and I better learn that really quickly Side one joining here .

But thankfully a lot of the other stuff has been at least familiar enough to me , which is why I was able to take an elevated role here . I think it's okay , I've done this , I've done all of this stuff before . I just have to learn a little bit on the industry of the product we're selling into .

I really like understanding things around M&A so acquiring companies , emerging with companies so there's areas there that I certainly know more about now than I did before , and that's been an area of a lot of interest . How do I look at a company and say that's one that we should buy ? That would be a great investment for us ?

So kind of like a almost pieces of due diligence I think is interesting . But honestly , there's a couple of things that I'm looking for next , which would be being a CEO of a company working in private equity or venture capital , and that whole area is very interesting to me . You know , one of my goals is to be on a bunch of boards .

One day I'm started working with a venture capital company as a tech advisor , so I help out companies here and there , but those are all things that are out of my comfort zone , but I'm close enough where I feel like I'd be great at that . I hope I'd be great at that .

Think , okay , you can be like an animal in the middle of the road and with two headlines coming at your way and you can be stuck and just not moving . Or you can have some reflexes of saying , hey , this is what I do when I don't know . Did you have some advice for us ?

And so you get stuck in this thing where you're kind of afraid to move because you don't know about it . But if you just sort of close your eyes and leap over , you're not gonna do anything else but learn about that because that's what your time is now dedicated to . So that's how I do it .

And then , once you're in that place , it's easy enough to YouTube , Google , read a book , so tons of ways to actually figure it out once you're there .

You know , I don't like thrill rides , I don't like going on roller coasters , but I do like traveling somewhere new and having a new experience , and that's , you know , my favorite way to kind of travel and see the world . I don't want to do the same thing over and over again .

Really really cool seeing you Started as a developer , going places , going into IT , saying hey , no , I stopped this , I want to do something else , and then never , ever , will I go back to this industry again and then coming back to it a couple of years later and following this hard trail of not knowing where what you know and finding stuff you don't know and

you want to learn , and just going there . Fantastic , really really cool , thank you . Where would be the best place to continue the discussion with you ?

You can find the links to all the platforms the show appears on on our website devjourneyinfo , slash , subscribe . Talk to you soon .