Episode #064 features Ahmer Khan of athenahealth. After watching four friends fail their first Computer Science course, Ahmer figured he had to try it. Following a stint in rain-soaked Seattle, he came back to put down roots at Raytheon. He opened people's eyes there to new technologies, embracing other cultures, and appreciating diversity. The one constant theme in his career has been seeking out and destroying monoliths - a unique calling that he carries on today! Ahmer's LinkedIn https://www....
Apr 11, 2022•36 min•Ep 64•Transcript available on Metacast Season 6 of Underserved kicks off with Daniel Goldenberg. While many kids in high school were biding their time, Daniel was finishing a CCNA curriculum and working for a local MSP. User empathy and customer focus he learned there served him well later in his career as a Director of IT and Security. We also talk about the best brisket in Texas and the sports scene at Syracuse. Dan's LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/dsgoldenberg/ Lockpicking https://toool.us/ Dan's Texas BBQ Favorites: Brisket...
Apr 04, 2022•34 min•Ep 63•Transcript available on Metacast We finish off Season 5 with Doug Morgan, Senior Director of Development at Alteryx. Doug took his CS chops from high school and Georgia Tech out to the west coast. After learning on the company dime, he took his own company through an acquisition and has run several engineering organizations since. We discuss the upside of a Division I sports school, the pain of the pivot, and rising early for rare beer. hopOn Acquisition https://medium.com/@lola.com/blade-travel-acquires-hopon-a2036c502655 Zipc...
Dec 27, 2021•35 min•Ep 62•Transcript available on Metacast Lifelong Texan Lance Sleeper joins us for Episode #061. Lance studied journalism in school but always tinkered with computers growing up. After a motorsports PR gig evaporated, Lance found himself the most tech-savvy person at a mortgage company. His career focused on security from that point forward, exposing him to several different industries. We talk about airline IT, the importance of diversity and inclusiveness in security, Texas BBQ, and what it's like to wear the zebra stripes in footbal...
Dec 20, 2021•45 min•Ep 61•Transcript available on Metacast Episode #060 of Underserved features Conrad Morgan. Conrad started out building PCs when they were still a luxury item. His first foray into the technology industry was working with process control hardware, but a decision to work in an Amazon warehouse around the holidays led him to a career in large-scale e-commerce. We talk about labor management systems, automating your way out of a job, and live streaming whiskey blinds. https://playsnake.org/ http://barnnight.com/ https://www.buffalotraced...
Dec 13, 2021•42 min•Ep 60•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode #059 we talk with Chris Sullivan. A former Navy submariner, Chris leveraged the GI bill and his curiosity about software development into a career tying together power and programming. We talk about what it's like being on a nuclear sub, doing Homer Simpson's job and then trying to improve it, and the business of sanctions compliance. https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/13/asia/china-us-xinjiang-sanctions-intl-hnk/index.html https://gps.uml.edu/ https://www.va.gov/education/about-gi-bill-bene...
Dec 06, 2021•34 min•Ep 59•Transcript available on Metacast John Arsneault started full-time in the IT industry while still in high school. Wellington Management was rapidly becoming more dependent on computers and John defaulted into desktop support for hundreds of people. After seeing the potential of software companies at a VC firm, John dreamed of equity and opportunity at a startup. It took a couple of tries to get that right and to balance the demands of work and life, but now John is both a law firm CIO and a successful venture investor himself. H...
Nov 29, 2021•46 min•Ep 58•Transcript available on Metacast Erik Dasque is our guest on Episode #057. We talk about the winding road from "the West Virginia of France" to becoming a software VP in the United States. By always staying hands-on-keyboard and coding a bit in his free time, Erik has earned himself the moniker of "an engineer's engineering manager." We cover the role of a "Repair CTO", what to do when layoffs are in the investment thesis, and having to play code cop as an open-source project manager. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT https://...
Nov 22, 2021•42 min•Ep 57•Transcript available on Metacast Episode #056 features Josh West, founder of Foundation.io. Josh is passionate about the foundation of software development - how do we make it easy and productive and FUN to be a software developer at a given company? How do we get developers writing code quickly instead of burning weeks on ramp-up and development environment setup tasks? (hint: Kubernetes!) A company where it is hard to "get up to speed" is at a disadvantage in a hot job market for developers. Also discussed - developer confere...
Nov 15, 2021•48 min•Ep 56•Transcript available on Metacast Chris Hull is the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Otus, a Chicago-based edtech company. After 13 years as an educator, Chris wanted to minimize the chaos of disconnected edtech tools for K-12 administrators, educators, students, and their families. We talk about his humble beginnings gaming, how hating education until college made him want to teach, and how his new company helps educators bridge the gap between subjects and years at schools (think SalesForce Accounts, Contact, and Activi...
Nov 08, 2021•38 min•Ep 55•Transcript available on Metacast Episode #054 features Steve Picciano, VP of Engineering at FineTune. What if you interviewed for a job, didn't love it, but the interviewer says, "One of the reasons you don't want to come here is one of the reasons we want you here." Do you take the job and the challenge? Steve did. Hear that unusual tale, as well as taking the Smalltalk language to the big time, witnessing post-acquisition speeches that eviscerated engineering org charts, and Steve's secret to managing distributed teams (hint:...
Nov 01, 2021•42 min•Ep 54•Transcript available on Metacast Episode #053 features Mike Sheldon, CTO of RedRover. Mike has made some unconventional moves, starting full-time work before graduating college, missing graduation to get married, and choosing to support an older product line instead of the hot, new greenfield project. It has all worked out for him though, still happily married, still working with friends he met at that first job, and heading up engineering at a new company that leverages his years of domain experience. Also covered: a most unus...
Oct 25, 2021•43 min•Ep 53•Transcript available on Metacast Morgan Creighton grew up watching Carl Sagan explain the wonders of our universe on PBS, inspiring Morgan to study physics. During his first job after college, a Nobel Physics Laureate famously opined that Computer Science would someday be declared a sub-discipline of physics. Morgan feels this is exactly the opposite of the truth - physics may eventually be declared a sub-discipline of CS! We cover the management of entropy in software, the Technicolor Dreamcoat that is functional programming, ...
Oct 18, 2021•38 min•Ep 52•Transcript available on Metacast We kick off Season 5 speaking to Bob Hammond, CTO of Choreograph. Bob has survived the dotcom boom and bust, several acquisitions and divestitures, and scaling several companies to provide ad delivery to large audiences. When you make things big enough and fast enough, the LAN speed often becomes your throttle, and expansion efforts are like changing the tires on a speeding car. We talk about backbone bottlenecks, boats Bob wishes he had been on, and building a rig to fly virtual planes when the...
Oct 11, 2021•42 min•Ep 51•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 050 of Underserved features Gene Grella, a renaissance IT executive who also teaches, flies RC planes/drones, and fires a musket after every Patriots home game touchdown. We discuss the merits of a big, boring, process-driven company for your first job out of college. We also talk about CEOs who put their personality stamp on their companies, FPV flight, and how the best professors correlate the classroom lessons to the real world. Wang 2200: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_2200 PDP 1...
Jul 12, 2021•41 min•Ep 50•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest Sean Mack spent many sunny surf days at UCSC in the basement computer lab, but it paid off. Sean was at the dawn of the streaming age, helping bring online everything from submarine trips to game shows. Later in his career, he moved to education technology as the mission was more in line with his interests. We talk about enterprise DevOps, balancing security and capability delivery, and playing the upright bass for rent. Wiley: https://www.wiley.com/ UC Santa Cruz: https://slugstore.uc...
Jul 05, 2021•38 min•Ep 49•Transcript available on Metacast Noah Pryor realized early on that building GUIs in C was a losing battle, as was fielding support calls at 3 a.m. from drunken phone battery kiosk users. Noah pivoted into Ed Tech and we talk about how he enjoys the journey and the mission. Also discussed: Modern-day web scraping tools, dealing with DMCA requests, and what happens when you Rickroll yourself. Age of empires: https://www.ageofempires.com/ Teachable: https://teachable.com/ Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/ Seat Geek: www.seatgeek.com/...
Jun 28, 2021•35 min•Ep 48•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest Jen McComas started out intercepting calls for help from customers and building herself a tech support position. This "build your own" theme continued in her career as Jen invented roles in subsequent technology companies, culminating with becoming a division CTO at IBM. We talk about the changing definition of work and productivity, the importance of curiosity, and how staying in your swim lane may shrink your pool. Jobs of the future https://www.voanews.com/usa/all-about-america/most...
Jun 21, 2021•39 min•Ep 47•Transcript available on Metacast Out of the mosh pits of Worcester, Jeff Gnatek found his way to a graphic design internship and coding by creating tattoo artist websites. Custom Made (think Etsy on-demand) led him to become the Head of Engineering at Butcher Box, the monthly meat-by-mail company. We talk about ribeyes as a perk, hardcore history, and empathy for fellow managers when you become one. https://tattoonow.com/ https://www.machinemetrics.com/ https://www.custommade.com/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadows_Fall...
Jun 14, 2021•32 min•Ep 46•Transcript available on Metacast This week's guest Matt Hillery started his career translating between business users and the engineering ivory tower. This skill would come in handy again and again throughout his career as he honed in on content management as a vocation and basis for a company he later sold. We cover lessons learned from start to exit, energy-efficient housing as a hobby, and what to do when a job leaves you. https://martinfowler.com/articles/data-monolith-to-mesh.html https://www.infoworld.com/article/3287824/...
Jun 07, 2021•36 min•Ep 45•Transcript available on Metacast This week's guest Doug Poirier started out programming on a VIC 20 but found during his career that he liked putting tools in users' hands and driving adoption better than slinging code. What good is technology anyway if you can't get people to embrace it? We talk about the ILOVEYOU virus's siren song, the virtualization of databases, and the hidden value of SharePoint in Office 365. ILOVEYOU virus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILOVEYOU Conventional wisdom and database virtualization: https://s...
May 31, 2021•39 min•Ep 44•Transcript available on Metacast This week's guest Nausheen Moulana grew up fascinated by the potential of the humble electron. Her parents were wary to send her to the US after hearing some scary stories, but Nausheen made it here in time for grad school. As a MATLAB power-user, Nausheen was thrilled to work at The Mathworks for decades. We talk about when it's time to move on, the importance of financial literacy for software professionals, and the delicate balance of "finding your voice" as a female in engineering. How I got...
May 24, 2021•38 min•Ep 43•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest Lisa Maxwell was encouraged to "go into computers" but initially resisted this advice. She enjoyed playing music so much she ended up with a degree in it, but found that it's hard to make a living that way. Lisa's aptitude for math led her to program for a living, as well as qualifying for MENSA. We talk about instrument petting zoos, the tryout similarities between orchestras and sports teams, and what goes on at those MENSA meetings. Agile Manifesto: https://agilemanifesto.org/ Agile...
May 17, 2021•37 min•Ep 42•Transcript available on Metacast JP Beaudry grew up in rural Quebec hacking together cars and studying engineering. After an eye-opening internship in Japan, he came to the US as the DotCom bubble was booming, discovering in the process that timing is everything in careers. We discuss his love/hate relationship with automobiles, changing development velocity, and his experience bringing online learning to the masses at edX. https://open.edx.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_Pony#Canadian-spec_(Non-ECC_LHD) Sherbrooke U...
May 10, 2021•37 min•Ep 41•Transcript available on Metacast This week's guest Vesa Tormanen grew up in Finland, first amazed by the computers running at the government pension fund where his parents worked. He hit university at the perfect time, as fellow Finn Linus Torvalds was creating Linux, a classmate was inventing ssh, and the web browser came of age. We talk about Nokia's history and Apple's future, as well as how his current company Neurala is using AI to accelerate and improve product and materials inspection. Twitter: @vesatormanen Neurala http...
May 03, 2021•34 min•Ep 40•Transcript available on Metacast Matt Phair did not expect to be a data scientist when he was a butcher in his younger days. But after some school and getting some experience he found technology to be a great vehicle for social mobility. Matt talks to us about Peapod Digital Labs using data science to make the shopping experience better. He also shares some suggestions for folks who aspire to become great data scientists or developers. Matt's show notes: LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/matt-phair Peapod Digital Labs: https://www....
Apr 26, 2021•41 min•Ep 39•Transcript available on Metacast This week's guest Brian Haugli is a "recovering CISO" - a veteran manager of big-company Information Security who is re-packaging that skillset for the SMB market. Brian is also the host of CISOlife, a YouTube channel about struggles, tools, and solutions for CISOs. We talk about Brian's early days as a physical security tester, realistic vendor assessment, and the origin of his company SideChannel. RealCISO.io - https://www.realciso.io ). SideChannel - https://www.sidechannel.com YouTube - http...
Apr 19, 2021•42 min•Ep 38•Transcript available on Metacast Season Four kicks off with our guest Jeff Krampf. Jeff started on an Apple II back in the day and worked on CU-SeeMe, the Internet's first video conference software - the great grandfather of Zoom. We talk about commercializing open-source, overcoming acquisition indigestion, and how Bose is adding real-time services to their famous speakers. CU-SeeMe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CU-SeeMe IntelliVid: https://www.securitymagazine.com/blogs/14-security-blog/post/79355-tyco-acquisition-of-intelli...
Apr 12, 2021•36 min•Ep 47•Transcript available on Metacast In our second Bonus Episode of Season 3, we cover toy collecting with Mason Fitch. Mason's collection features over 450 toys, mostly rare die-cast Shogun warriors, and other Japanese classics. We talk about how a single action figure purchase led to trips to both the West Coast and Japan in pursuit of these childhood mementoes. We also talk about how to truly appreciate the Citizen Kane of anime, Akira. toyboxdx.com http://toyboxdx.com/datafiles / ToyboxDX FB group https://www.facebook.com/group...
Jan 04, 2021•47 min•Ep 38•Transcript available on Metacast I was among many folks in Massachusetts who grew up watching Force 5, Star Blazers, and other animated shows from Japan (aka anime). In this bonus episode of Underserved, I talk with Art Sousa, a lifelong friend with a shared nostalgia for these giant fighting robot serials. I then speak with Robert "Swifty" Swift aka Nixon, who takes us much further down the anime rabbit hole to show us how the genre is "as big as all outdoors" and is rapidly going mainstream on Netflix and Hulu. Why is Anime l...
Dec 28, 2020•47 min•Ep 37•Transcript available on Metacast 
