Information Technology
From startup CTO to manufacturing IT, learning how real systems work and fail in high-stakes environments.
Learning IT the Hard Way
Sometimes the best education comes from being thrown in the deep end. As CTO of a building automation startup, I had to learn everything from network architecture to database design, not in a classroom, but because real systems needed to work today.
The Startup Years
Wearing All the Hats
At GENI, being CTO meant being the entire IT department. Network goes down? That's you. Database needs optimization? You again. New integration needed? Better figure it out fast.
The Real Education
Those five years were my real IT education. Every system integration, every network configuration, every database optimization was teaching me how technology actually works in the real world.
Into the Fire
Enova Premier: The Real Test
When I joined Enova Premier as IT Production Manager, it was trial by fire. Four plants, seven production lines, critical systems offline, and every minute of downtime costing thousands. This wasn't a startup where you could iterate—this was automotive manufacturing where everything had to work perfectly, all the time.
The challenge wasn't just technical—it was understanding how shop floor operations, enterprise software, and business processes all had to work together. You can't just deploy new systems; you have to understand why operators work the way they do, how data flows affect quality reporting, and what happens when things go wrong at 2 AM.
The Zero-Backend Revolution
The Big Realization
Manufacturing operations are fundamentally about moving information between systems. Instead of building point solutions, we needed flexible data pipelines that could adapt to any use case.
The Solution
By combining KepServer for PLC integration, SymmetricDS for data sync, and Hasura for automatic API generation, we eliminated backend development entirely. Any interface could be built with just frontend code.
The Bridge to Software Engineering
"The transition to software engineering wasn't a leap—it was a natural evolution. I'd been solving increasingly complex problems with code, just in an environment where failure wasn't an option."
The Perfect Training Ground
Manufacturing IT turned out to be the perfect training for software engineering. When your code controls physical equipment and production schedules, you learn to think differently about reliability, monitoring, and system design.
Lessons That Stuck
Manufacturing environments taught me lessons that no bootcamp could: how to design for failure modes, why monitoring is as important as the code itself, and how documentation prevents disasters. These weren't just best practices—they were survival skills.
What started as "making manufacturing software suck less" became a journey into understanding how to build systems that work in the real world. The skills that kept production lines running turned out to be exactly what was needed to build reliable software at scale.
Key Learnings
Real systems are more about people and processes than technology
The best solutions eliminate complexity rather than manage it
Manufacturing-grade reliability requires systems thinking
Documentation and monitoring are not optional extras