Underserved

Eva Moscat caps off Season 10 of Underserved. Eva grew up in a math-intensive family, and a college course requirement introduced her to programming. She found her niche in network development, and as interconnected devices became the norm, her career prospects bloomed. We discuss the importance of mentors/networking, embedded debugging for vendor culpability, and robots obviating the landscaper....

Episode #121 of Underserved features Dmitry Grenader. Dmitry left the Soviet Union with his family and landed in Brooklyn. He worked his way up from odd jobs to a master's degree and became a software developer. A mentor saw promise in Dmitry's product management skills and encouraged him to lean in that direction. This has led Dmitry to a decades-long successful career in the Boston software indu...

Episode 120 of Underserved is here! Our guest today is Christine Bird, a fellow UMass alum and veteran of the financial services industry. Christine started her career teaching some of the toughest students and learned to love it. Her foray into technology and QA taught her bug diplomacy, the SDLC, and how to make the skills vs. attitude decision. We discuss front-loading your tech learning, the A...

In Episode 119 of Underserved, I interview Dustin Humphreys. From the level land in the Texas panhandle comes this pharmacist-turned-technologist. Dustin wore many hats to help bring drug stores online during the DotCom boom. He has since helped multiple drugstore chains advance their online presence and has branched out into other industries as well. We talk about feature obsession being overrate...

In Underserved #118 we interview Andrew Heffernan. Andrew grew up believing he wanted to be an engineer. After dabbling in civil and plastics, he found his way into the tech industry via customer support at Constant Contact. The company thrived and provided Andrew advancement into development, where he discovered that the hardest part of the job could be getting all the humans to work in concert....

Episode #117 of Underserved features our guest Sree Kancharla. It looked like Sree was on track toward a math PhD and teaching, but a tech career blossomed instead. Sree was involved with many projects ahead of their time, including iterative deployment and Google Glass. We talk about innovating in the digital realm and product vs. service companies.   For more information:  Sailpoint Mandiant Goo...

Kurt Iverson is featured in Episode #116 of Underserved. Kurt offered to build a website for a budding comedian in exchange for free show tickets. While not a great monetary deal, the experience and connections ended up paying huge dividends. Kurt parlayed this into development gigs for interactive firms, The Federal Reserve, and Garmin. We talk deploying with Disney, user empathy, and George Bret...

Dom Scandinaro is our guest for Episode #115 of Underserved. Dom enjoyed building computers with his Dad and taking an entrepreneurial angle with their shared venture. As a young track star, a scholarship offer made his college choice for him. Luckily the CS program at Wheeling was fun and UI-focused, which has led to a career in front-end development, mobile development, and now management as a C...

Philosophy major Jason "Mac" Macauley found his way into the industry via content moderation. He caught the coding bug when he realized that his love of logic translated well. He aimed to be an "Employee number less than 10" at a startup, cash out, and teach philosophy. After a few years, he came to terms with being a professional software developer and aimed for the next challenge - managing peop...

Season 10 of Underserved kicks off with our guest, Rob Salvador. Rob's late teens were spent on a computer, but playing multi-table online poker tournaments, not coding. The DOJ shut down online poker, forcing Rob to pivot. His dad's construction company proved fertile ground for learning the  industry's challenges. Rob has parlayed this into a business that optimizes supply chains using AI, lower...

Season 9 concludes with Episode #112 featuring Michael Dane. It took a formative solo photography trip to the UK for Michael to find himself and his potential. After discovering what he was good at and the Internet, he was off and running with his brother Abe and Hearst Media. This led to a career in data and business intelligence, often having to sell management and clients why those are so valua...

Episode #111 of Underserved features Drew Schillinger. Early on Grandpa Jack wanted to teach Drew programming, but mom didn't want him inside glued to the computer. Drew eventually found his way between chair and keyboard, first teaching and later practicing as a developer. A memorable stint at Cartoon Network's Adult Swim gave him experience as an entertainer and a technical architect. We also ta...

Ep. 110 of Underserved features Rob Larsen. Rob was around for the glory days of the web when you could "view source" on a webpage to learn how to do something new via imitation. At the same time, he was involved in local magazines, writing about film after a stint at Emerson. Rob learned quickly that writing code paid better than writing prose, and leaned into front-end development for several ye...

Kevin "Cactus Dude" Kreucher is our guest for Episode #109 of Underserved. Kevin is another unique story - going from a client of a treatment center to running its IT operations. Kevin got a tour of MSPs after that and built out his Rolodex steadily to support all facets of IT. Nowadays Kevin considers his phone his greatest tool, being able to tap his network to get any job done. Also covered - e...

Cassio Goldschmidt grew up coding on cloned computers in Brazil. Most folks go to the college in their city, and Cassio decided to study Computer Science at his. A desire to get some international experience brought him to the US for a 3 month internship and he has been here ever since. Cassio shares stories about installing and re-discovering an Easter egg in software, inventing the popular Super...

Jason Judge ended up at the right place (Redmond, WA) at the right time (1995) to see the world change. In Episode #107 of Underserved, we discuss the Seattle scene in the 2000s, leaning into the database world, the MBA education you get by proxy working for a startup, and the importance of preventing bullying. Jason also talks about an important factor in his employment decisions - companies that...

Paul Dingwitz shares his experiences with us in Episode #106 of Underserved. Paul "answered the call" from an Army recruiter, and this was his introduction to technology. In the military you don't get a lot of choice about what you do, so when he was tapped to maintain the LAN and WAN he had to figure IT out. A private digital media firm lured him back stateside and into the corporate sector, wher...

In Episode #105 I talk to our guest Vic Caruso. Vic went the music crossover route into tech, entering the industry during the Dot Com Boom and Bust. His project management experience has helped him cross verticals from video games to municipalities to mall management during his career. We discuss the tricky process of a "de-merger", meditating to figure out the next move, and what the "Big Pictur...

Aaron Harris is featured in Episode #104 of Underserved. As a kid in the woods of Vermont, Aaron still found a way to plug into technology. A classmate at BYU convinced him to switch majors from CS to Accounting for undergrad, then to get a Masters in IS. This unique combination suited him well, landing him at a Big 6 when there were still 6 of them, and later to an accounting software startup cal...

Episode #103 of Underserved features Ema Patki. Ema heard a common refrain from her parents growing up, the only two legitimate professions were engineer and doctor. She didn't love EE, but it led her to programming and USC. Protocols that helped the Internet boom also helped Ema advance her career. She is now at Align Technologies, where helping people improve their smiles has a surprising amount...

Episode #102 of Underserved features Jim Scholhamer. Jim had an early fascination with geology, history, and archaeology. Dad encouraged him to take up engineering, where he eventually fell into materials science. This field could mean something as boring as bumper plastics or as exciting as space telescopes. Jim forged an exciting and adventurous path, including time as an expat in Germany. Once...

Season 9 of Underserved kicks off in-studio with our guest Tanya Bulkovshteyn. Tanya's family moved to Canada and quickly found out French immersion was not optional. Dad's push toward a technical career led her to computer science and the United States. Tanya describes how being a woman in the field has been at times a nice, novel way to stand out and others a hard way to fit in. This has led Tan...

Underserved has reached Episode 100! We celebrate this special landmark with a very special show. We bring back three previous guests (Mike Breault from #007, Eli Goldberg from #069, and Steve Kaufer from #013) and add one new one (Rachael Rosen) to form a panel of distinguished experts. We discuss with our panel how artificial intelligence is going to change the software development game forever....

Our 99th episode features Tim Sebel from Bullhorn. Tim was able to leverage his AP classes from high school into an unusually wide amount of choices in college. Or rather, not having to choose between three different majors and completing them all! Tim moved on to startups doing semantic search, helping small cable companies, and assisting folks with dementia before moving on to a large time-track...

Episode #098 of Underserved features Gu Xie live from Texas. We start with his unlikely story of growing up as a Chinese immigrant in Belize, moving to the US, and learning some tough lessons in and out of the classroom at the University of Georgia. Also discussed: leaning into data analytics, superior toolsets driving more mental strain to understand them, and why 10 years in data feels like 3 li...