Underserved

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: it is not more Zoom meetings). Finetune product page https://www.finetunelearning.com/ When Teradata closed the Boston Office, they also jettisoned the Presto product. However we had a few customers paying for support and they no longer had engineers to support these customers. So they transitioned the Support money to a spin off that became known as Starburst. This was founded by some of the Hadapt founders and several of the Teradata engineers who were working on Presto. Today the distribution is named "Trino". https://trino.io/ Some great articles on changing a culture https://hbr.org/2017/06/changing-company-culture-requires-a-movement-not-a-mandate https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/employee-relations/pages/10-tips-for-changing-your-companys-culture%E2%80%94and-making-it-stick.aspx Some history about Smalltalk https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/1241904/Introduction-to-the-Smalltalk-Programming-Language Atari 800 Game System https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3750/a_history_of_gaming_platforms_.php?print=1 Great Sports article about adapting, modernizing and expecting success https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/nfl/daily/jan00/27/coaches27.htm

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 unusual bachelor party invitation, and the best cheesesteak in Philly (a moving target).

• Red Rover https://www.redroverk12.com/
• Analog – the simplest productivity system by Ugmonk https://ugmonk.com/pages/analog
• Agile Manifesto https://agilemanifesto.org/
• Book recommendations https://a.co/5RF0dS3

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, how your soft skills let you exercise your tech skills, and Morgan's Law for problem isolation.

• The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
• St. John's High School https://www.stjohnshigh.org/
• The X-ray telescope from Harvard https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1988/5/9/up-up-and-away-palthough-harvard/
• Boston Area Scala Enthusiasts (BASE): https://www.meetup.com/boston-scala/
• Morgan's Monad talk: https://vimeo.com/103647102

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 there is no time to fly real ones.

• https://www.choreograph.com/
• https://www.wpp.com/
• https://www.xaxis.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobhammond/
• https://www.flightsimulator.com/
• https://www.cybage.com/sites/default/files/cybage_times/2020-07/CT28_Interactive_7July_0.pdf

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 11 - https://www.olddec.nl/Thanks-41-Years/PDP11.htm
• Electric Boat: https://westfaironline.com/102139/electric-boat-commits-to-investing-over-800m-in-state/
• Avery Dennison: https://timkellygroup.com/projects/finesse-longford/
• Tom Siebel: https://philanthropicpeople.com/profiles/thomas-m-siebel/
• Oracle HQ in Redwood City: https://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-employees-enjoy-pool-yacht-2015-1#since-1989-oracles-headquarters-has-dominated-the-town-of-redwood-city-california-about-25-miles-south-of-san-francisco-1
• Tinyhawk Drone: https://www.gearbest.com/brushless-fpv-racer/pp_009296354194.html
• Rick Reilly joins the End Zone Militia: https://www.espnfrontrow.com/2015/11/rick-reilly-joins-the-patriots-end-zone-militia/
• Pictures of Gene in action, and a real, live ABEND: https://photos.app.goo.gl/RbjF3rgrZGhjCT3H9

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.ucsc.edu/
• Muay Thai: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muay_Thai
• LinkedIn: SeanDMackNYC
• Twitter: @SeanDMackNYC
• Facebook: SeanDMackNYC
• Instagram: SeanDMackNYC
• Sean's latest article: Accelerating Change Through Crisis

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/

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-2030s-jobs-havent-been-invented-yet
• Unpaid work and GDP https://theconversation.com/womens-unpaid-work-must-be-included-in-gdp-calculations-lessons-from-history-98110
• Clan Aran Sweater Market https://www.aransweatermarket.com/clan-aran-sweaters?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIg63uzPzv8AIVlLWzCh08oALMEAAYASAAEgJgR_D_BwE

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

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/change-data-capture-as-a-gateway-to-a-streaming-platform.html
• https://passivehouse.com/
• https://www.energy.gov/eere/buildings/articles/perfect-wall-realistic