Operation Code interviews with vets in tech

Katie is a military spouse; her husband is on active duty in the Army. She works from home for a mobile app development company, as a Product Manager! in this interview Katie tells us her career history and how she came to be moving across the country to an area where she didn't know anyone, as a newlywed. Fortunately her company in Pennsylvania offered to keep her on as a remote worker, and we get to hear how that's worked out for her. Katie also has advice for military spouses and others thinking about moving into high tech (spoiler: jump right in!)

Mike Rodriguez is an former Marine who became a Windows XP administrator in the service, and he's stayed with it. He wanted to be a tank crewman, but unfortunately his partial color blindness limited the jobs he could perform inside a tank, so he had to take a different career path, and now here he is! There are all kinds of ways people come to computers. Mike was deployed to Iraq in 2005. Now he works for Teradata as an Application Security Analyst.

Dick Sonderegger has a much different story than most of our veterans -- he learned computers in the Marines during the Vietnam era. His story of HOW he got into computers is probably the best one I've ever heard, and you'll just have to listen to find it out! We shared an office for a few months on the Xerox Star project in the late 70's, and then I lost track of him. In this interview we talk about his Harvard and Marines experiences, his time at Data General during the "Soul of a New Machine" era (he knew those people), the Xerox Star effort and the big lightning storm that fried the local Ethernet, and much more.

Rami Mouro was born in Syria, and came to the US in his teens. He served in the National Guard in between going to the University of Colorado at Boulder, and is currently finishing up his degree. He has an internship coming up at Qualcomm, and is especially interested in embedded systems and cybersecurity. In this interview, we hear about Capture the Flag contests at hacker conferences, and also what it was like growing up in Damascus!

Emilie is a data analyst with GitLab, and is married to an active duty military officer. She came to the profession in a non-standard way -- via a degree in Political Science from Princeton! Being a military spouse meant that she needed the ability to work remotely, since she might be moving constantly. At GitLab, ALL employees are remote, so it's perfect. She had a natural ability to think critically and use data to make decisions, and she was able to pick up coding from books and online resources. If you're interested in Data Science, this is the interview for you, since we go into a lot of detail on how she thinks and what a data scientist actually does day to day.

Robert is an Air Force veteran who's now in grad school at Columbia. He's running Banneret, a company working to create opportunities for vets by making on-the-job training eligible for GI Bill benefits. In this interview, he traces his path through ROTC, active duty in the Air Force, and current work with Banneret. He talks about his program and other non-college paths to a post-military career, the unique strengths that veterans bring to the job, and the importance of having non-negotiable goals in your life.

Kelly served in the Guard in Iraq and Afghanistan, learned to code via online courses and self-teaching, worked as a freelancer, and is now with Topcoder, a crowdsourcing solutions company. She talks about her career path through college, military service, getting out and being an Admin, and deciding she could do even more. So she used the free resources on the Web and some of the online academies to learn to code, worked as a freelance developer, and now has a full time job with Topcoder.com. Kelly also talks about the challenges facing military spouses and how "freelance developer" is a great career that they can practice anywhere there's Internet.

Colleen is the wife of an active-duty pilot with 17 years in the service. She was getting frustrated with the career difficulties that come with the military's constant moves, and so she taught herself Ruby On Rails! Now she works from home with a variety of clients, and she could practice her new career from anywhere there's Internet. Colleen describes how she got into coding, what her clients are like, and how much she loves what she's doing. She also recounts her first contribution to Operation Code's open source codebase and what a difference a supportive community makes for a beginner.

David had no particular interest in Computer Science when he left the Marines, but he went to Mass Bay Community College and caught the bug. He transferred to Northeastern's co-op program and did two co-op gigs, one of which led to an offer for a full-time job. David talks about his journey to being a computer scientist, what languages he likes, what skills military veterans bring to a potential employer, and how Operation Code is helping him & others like him.

In this interview, James tells us about his path into computer software from a 10-year Army career, including a stint as Drill Instructor (hear how the movie Full Metal Jacket continues to influence DI's!). James also has a fairly unusual hobby: he wrestles professionally, in an independent organization in Dallas.