From Telecom Hardware to Cloud: Taft Singletary’s Tech Career Journey | Ep030

In this episode, Manuel Martinez interviews Taft Singletary, a Senior Technical Account Manager with three decades of experience in telecommunications and technology. Taft shares his path from growing up in North Philadelphia to becoming a respected cloud professional.

Starting with his education at DeVry University and early career at RAM Mobile Data, Taft worked on cutting-edge technology including the first prototypes of BlackBerry devices and Palm Pilots. He details his progression through roles at Cox Communications, Comcast, Scientific Atlanta (now Cisco), and beyond, sharing honest reflections on career transitions and leadership challenges.

Throughout the conversation, Taft offers practical career advice: surround yourself with high achievers, build meaningful professional relationships, and take strategic control of your career path. His story highlights how combining technical expertise with people skills creates opportunities in the rapidly changing technology landscape.

This episode provides valuable insights for technology professionals at any stage looking to grow their careers and navigate industry evolution successfully.

#CareerDownloads #TechCareers #CloudComputing #Telecommunications #ProfessionalDevelopment #MentorshipMatters

Manuel: Welcome everyone, my name is Manuel Martinez and this is another episode of Career Downloads. Where each episode, I basically hit the refresh button, bring on a different guest to learn more about their background and their experiences, to try and uncover any actionable advice that you can use as you’re managing your own career. So for today’s episode, I have with me a coworker. His name is Taft Singletary and his background is in communications and telecom. So we did have a brief conversation when we first started working together and he kind of mentioned some of his background, I shared some of mine, and I thought it was a really interesting kind of how he ended up moving in here and some of the experiences and his expertise. So I figured I would bring him on and just really kind of dig in a little bit deeper and share that story with the rest of you. So I will go ahead and introduce Taft. So thanks Taft, I appreciate you coming on and being open and willing to share your experiences.

Taft: I appreciate it, man. Thanks for inviting me. My first time on a podcast, but I do appreciate the mission that you’re trying to accomplish and yeah, can’t wait to share. Just my, you know, everything that I’ve done and hopefully it’ll help others. And again, hopefully it’ll just maybe motivate others to maybe look more into tech, follow their passions, things of that nature.

Manuel: So if you don’t mind just kind of to start off, just give me a brief summary of kind of what your current role or position is and then just some of the roles and responsibilities of what you are in charge of today.

Taft: Yeah, so I’m a senior technical account manager. I have multiple customers and my job is really to just help them maximize their cloud, their complex cloud journey. And they’re all in different phases of their cloud journey. Some are recently starting, some are just well-advanced. And my job is to really help them excel at operational components, their usage, their cost, seeing around corners for them from a security perspective, really just being a technical consultant for them and just making sure that they are maximizing, I’m gonna say their cloud investments. And that’s ultimately what my job is.

Manuel: If you can now kind of give us a brief summary of kind of where you grew up and kind of what eventually got you interested in technology, so everybody’s different. Some people early on, some people later in life, but just kind of what sparked that eventual interest and that want to kind of pursue that area.

Taft: Yeah, so I grew up in Philadelphia, a very poor section of Philadelphia, North Philadelphia. And we didn’t have a lot. And this is, I’m a little older now, so this is 80s time period. So internet hasn’t really jumped off yet. And there’s really only certain things that you can get into from a technology perspective. And for me, it was movies. It was, I was very attracted to movies like Star Wars and the old series Star Trek and all these things. And it was just, hey, being able to beam somebody onto a planet and just the Star Wars is all this electronics and it was just great. I just, I really just love that. But at the time, like I said, there wasn’t… you had some computers, Commodore computers and kind of basic stuff. You had Atari systems. Everything was kind of really basic, but I was into all of those things. To the point where my mom just left me alone. I would get on my Atari, kind of like the kids do today. But I was just into technology, walkie talkies, anything that had any sort of, to me, tech. I just was like focused intently on it. So I graduated high school and I was actually going to go into Air Force and that’s a total another story. I got talked out of it. But there was a recruiter for DeVry University. And at the time, DeVry University had a telecommunications management program. And I was really interested in it. It encompassed computers. At the time, telephone was really the, the telecommunications medium. But it was electronic engineering. So we put together circuit boards. It was pretty much everything. And it was low cost. Because again, I came from, my parents couldn’t afford to send me to, I’m going to say like a regular college. But more importantly, a lot of regular colleges didn’t have that broad of a program. It was really computer programming. And this one was computer programming and everything else like I mentioned. So I decided I’m going to go there. And I ended up going off to DeVry. Got a bachelor degree in telecommunications. And again, I was able to really chart my career. And it was early on. And so I could go into computer programming or I can go into just pure electronic engineering. Or if I wanted to stay in telecommunications, I can get into the telephone side. And there was plenty of telephone companies out there that were looking for engineers to do, just basic communications sort of things. So that’s where I got started. And then when I graduated, I ended up moving back to Philadelphia with my uncle. And you’ll find my uncle come up a lot. He was the one that, he was pretty successful, but more in a traditional, he was like an accountant. But he pushed me hard to excel. Like I would come home with D’s and he would literally like just go crazy. I’m like, what are you doing? You have to get A’s, you don’t understand it. And now I get what he was saying. Like again, at the time as a young black male, I didn’t understand him, but he’s trying to tell me you have to be excellent. You can’t be just good, you have to be excellent. So again, you’ll find out he’ll probably come up a lot in our conversation, but he really didn’t want me to go off and do computers. He thought that was too edgy too this. So I kind of bucked the trend with him and said, no, no, no, I’m gonna go do this. Cause that’s just where I wanted to be. So I graduate, I’m back living with him. I mean my mom and dad in North Philly, but I didn’t want to go back to the hood hood. So I’m with him. (both laughing) And I was literally about to start work at a Radio Shack. I had got a job offer at a Radio Shack and I get a call from RAM Mobile Data. So RAM Mobile Data, they did a national packet switching network that included wireless. And it was really kind of the first kind of two way radio type of communication that included data. You had telephone, but actual data. And so they offered me a position. It was for $29,000 a year. I thought it was like the best thing ever. (both laughing) And so I’m in Philadelphia, I moved to North Jersey cause that’s where they were based at. And I was a lab engineer in which allowed me to start from the ground up. So I was building equipment, I was upgrading, we call them cell towers and cell switches, upgrading cell switches, doing packet analysis, all these different things that I thought was just the coolest thing possible. It was amazing.

Manuel: So, and you mentioned like when you were in college, you’re getting exposure to like, it sounds like a number of different things. So was communications, after you graduated and you mentioned Radio Shack and eventually this company called you, were you, was communications the area that kind of called your attention more? And were you like putting in applications everywhere? Was this, what was that process for you kind of moving out and saying, okay, this is where I think I wanna go. Like I get you pick technology, but what made you decide communications and apply in that realm?

Taft: That’s a good question. So at DeVry, one of the things they have you do is before you get your bachelor’s degree, you have to do an internship somewhere. And in Jersey, they only offered an associate degree. So you had to move to one of four locations to actually get a bachelor’s degree. So DeVry University had locations in multiple cities. I chose Kansas City. So I actually moved out to Kansas City for my final two years. And my internship happened to be with Sprint, which was based in Kansas City. So my internship, we would wire, they would send us telephone jobs and we would actually wire, let’s say like an office building with telephone. It was all telephony wired, went down to like a PBX switch. And it was all voice, but it was all communications. And that started getting me into a twisted pair and punching down and dialing, making sure that, okay, this is working, testing it. And so that was really what kind of sparked my interest in, man, I like to focus on the communication side. Because again, I could have did computer programming and others, but again, with the internship, and I was at Sprint for about eight months, is the internship. And it was just, it was great. Again, we got to do every aspect of it. Sprint got free labor, but we were able to get some experience. And that’s what really sparked my interest in the communication side. I will say when I graduated, I just wanted a job. So I was putting in jobs everywhere. It didn’t matter. (laughing) But in this case, RAM Mobile Data, they saw my internship at Sprint. And that’s what interests them in me. And again, I’m young, I’m right out of school. And it was like, hey, we’d like to bring you in because we see you got some experience doing. And a lot of the things we were doing, we’re doing wiring equipment and making sure X equipment can talk to Y equipment. So it really was a lot of stuff I did in my internship. And that’s kind of how I got started. So now I’m in the lab, and that was the first things I did. Basically what I was doing when I was at Sprint. But then they started moving me into different areas. Hey, we want you to start being responsible for making sure that all the lab switches are at the right code. And we were getting code all the time. So now I’m having to put more of the computer program and then some of the command line things that I learned into practice. And so now I’m upgrading switches and then testing out to make sure the switches are working right. If they weren’t, they taught me, okay, here’s a packet analyzer. Now here’s how you do it. So they really kind of grew me into focusing in on not only communications, but protocols, processes around how you keep communication networks up and running, just all those sort of things. And it was all around communications. So that’s kind of how I just got almost kind of steered down the path of telecommunications specifically.

Manuel: Got it, okay. I mean, it sounds like apart from what you learned from the internship, I mean, you’re learning troubleshooting, you’re learning command line switches. I mean, it’s broadening. It’s not just, and I think that sometimes misconception that people get is like, oh, telecom, all you’re doing is phones. But there’s more to it, right?

Taft: Absolutely, 100%.

Manuel: They run on the network. Even if it is a phone network, it still has to route even prior to there being data. Like it has to route the PBX switches.

Taft: Oh yeah.

Manuel: I got exposed, I never did a lot of that, but I would work with somebody that did that and they would explain that. I’m like, oh, it’s like a network switch. And he’s like, yeah, it’s just, it’s voice.

Taft: Yes, 100%, 100%. Yeah, it was interesting that, because in that time, most of our customers were municipalities, policemen, ambulance. So as an example, we had, I think it was Orange County police department in California. And they were one of the first ones that used a terminal that we basically approved that allowed them to run a license plate. They can just type in your license plate. And they would go wireless to one of our switches back to their database. And then they will pull in certain parameters about the driver, did any tickets, things like that. And before they had ways of doing it, but it was really slow technology, it took a while. This was like instantaneous. They’ll put it in and within like 10 seconds, it’ll come back with all this information. It’s on a screen in the car now, right? So they were one of the first ones to really start using that. Now, again, that’s common place now, right? So technology, all the different graphic screens. But at the time, it was just a revolutionary. And the ambulance, they would do similar things where they can, if they got a call, what would come down is, okay, we got this 911 call and it has all the information. So they’re not even talking in dispatch, it’s just popping into them. So it was a really popular service. And it was based on MobiText, which anyone can kind of look that up. But MobiText was a early, basically IP network. So it has source destination address, pretty much IP, but it ran over X25 packets switching network. A lot of, I’m dating myself, a lot of old technology, but it basically was the first generation of this kind of interactive. So fun fact, we did two years into my job, we worked on with a company called Research in Motion, we worked on a two way pager, and ended up becoming the interactive pager, which was a really popular, the Verizon deployed it, AT&T, like everybody deployed this interactive pager. So the company Research in Motion, if people don’t know, they are the founders of the BlackBerry. We worked on the first prototype of the BlackBerry, with the keyboard, it ran over MobiText network. And when they first released the BlackBerry, it was totally on RAM mobile data. And it was everybody, it was like people were buying those things up like chiclets. But yeah, I worked on the first, worked on the interactive pager, which ultimately with the company became the BlackBerry. And we worked on the first prototypes of the BlackBerry. And then Palm, their first Palm Pilot was on the RAM Mobile data network. So it was really just bleeding edge technology. And it was great.

Manuel: And like you mentioned, I mean, sure you’re dating yourself, but I remember a lot of that when it came out. But at the same time, like, this is probably only fueling your desire and probably the conviction that I made the right choice. Based on everything that you’ve talked about in the past, it’s understanding that not only are you making a change, like you’re on the bleeding edge of technology, it’s commonplace now, but at the time, like understanding that I worked on that, I worked on the thing that allows the police officer to do his job or a fire, like medic or whatever it is that’s getting that. And I think sometimes we forget because now technology is so commonplace. Sure, there’s new things like AI and things that are being developed, but people, I don’t think we always understand the impact that this has for our day-to-day jobs, right? Like if it’s not for what you worked on, the iPhone and Android, that never happens, right? Cause that communication doesn’t go through.

Taft: 100%, yeah. And like I said, it was older technology that evolved. So X-Tart25 became frame relay, which became ATM. And then really all that stuff was carrying ethernet. And then people realized, “Well, let’s just have ethernet do it. Why have all these other encapsulation barriers?” But those early on packet encapsulation, they built a lot of the dynamic routing and ways of really trying to get traffic from point A to point B. I don’t want to use a lot of acronyms, but like routing protocols that would use the shortest path versus if it had congestion, there was ways to notify, all of those was built into those early protocols. And then basically IP, TCP, UDP, they all started just pulling in all that information to the point where, again, you just ran ethernet. And then what was X-25 is now IP. And so it was a lot of that early on technology to really optimize packet switching, which allowed the internet to do what it does today. I mean, it really, a lot of the same protocols are still in place today. We don’t see it because it’s just kind of under the hood now. But yeah, those are the things that we worked on. And that was really exciting.

Manuel: And while you’re there, it sounds like you were there for quite a while, right? And just understanding the progression of you started at running, just doing punch downs, and now you’re doing a lot of these other things. Are you within that for RAM data? Are you progressing? Like, are you moving up within there? It sounds like you spent a couple of years, right?

Taft: Yeah.

Manuel: I mean, technology moves fast, but not that fast. But you’re picking up skills along the way, you’re progressing, and are you applying internally? Are they just promoting you because of the good work that you’re doing? Like, how does that happen for you?

Taft: It was a combination. So yeah, I did start off as just a lab engineer. And once you kind of mastered the different aspects of the lab, I did get promoted to a tech support position. So we had a NOC, or a Network Operations Center, where people were watching maps and watching things go down and things like that. And I managed that group for a while, supervised that group for a while. But I ended up moving over into tech support because I was really good at troubleshooting and so I actually became a supervisor of that team as well. And our job was to take calls from, it wasn’t from end customers, it was always a call from Verizon. Some like somebody, hey, we’re having issues here and we would have to figure out how to troubleshoot it, make sure we can either reroute things or if we missed a configuration, it should have automatically did it, those sort of things. So I was in that group for two years. And then I applied for a software engineering position, which I got. And so I actually moved to a group where we built the backend servers, the backend servers, they were backend email servers that could translate from a Microsoft email server to that MobiText network to deliver it to the police text. So I actually started working for the group and we were always doing new features and things. So writing a lot of C code, Cobol at the time, because it was kind of old, but mainly C, C++. And yeah, so I was in that group for like a year and a half and that’s all we did was literally every six months, we would, like they call them sprints now, but at the time it was every six months, we had a release deadline. And so I worked with the teams and we just kind of did different features and different releases, tested them out. I sent it to the lab engineers, the new people, (laughing) let them test that out. But yeah, so my initial promotions were kind of, the company did them, but then I started wanting to do more because I had been doing that for like four years and I was like, I’m just kind of bored with it. And I actually sought out a much more complex position and was able to get in and started to software engineering.

Manuel: And how long did you spend there before you decided, it sounds like you had the opportunity, especially with the bigger company, to kind of move up and kind of grow new skills and kind of push yourself to those boundaries. But I’m assuming at some point you get to a point where you’re like, maybe not hit a ceiling, but maybe you’re just not seeing any other growth within there and you decide to kind of venture out to go do something or else. So what was kind of thought process there to say, okay, I think I’ve done everything I can do here, or is it more maybe you haven’t accomplished everything here, but somebody else calls on you or something else catches your attention? Like what’s the thought process and what ultimately leads you to leave?

Taft: So two things. First, I started traveling a bit more. So as part of that, my newer position, we had a facility in Toronto, so I was spending a week a month in Toronto. And then one of our infrastructures who built the actual cell switches and the routers and things we use was based in Fort Lauderdale. So I was spending a week in Fort Lauderdale. And honestly, by being in Fort Lauderdale and being in Toronto, I craved moving out of the Northeast. So it wasn’t even a technical thing. I was born in Philadelphia, I went to school in Jersey. I was in Kansas City for a bit, but mainly been in the Northeast and I’m working at a company in North Jersey, New York area. And I just wanted to get out.

Manuel: And when you say get out, was it more get out because you’re starting to experience definitely different places right outside of the North Jersey, but it’s also like maybe, I mean, Toronto and Florida, like that’s very different. And culture-wise, climate-wise, was it a combination of everything or?

Taft: Yeah, I definitely wanted to leave. Like I wanted to live somewhere else. And I was thinking more Florida than Canada, but I just wanted to leave. But also when I made my trips to either one of those places, I was working on, to me, it felt like bigger technologies, right? So yeah, I’m in the corporate office, but going to Florida, they’re working on just nothing but routing and protocols and just, I found I was enjoying when I left the office more than when I was in the office, to be totally honest with you. And so that started just kind of fueling my desire to just, “Yeah, maybe I’ve outgrown this place. Maybe there’s a better opportunity and a better place to live.” So it was kind of a little bit of both. The wild card there was one of my best friends who went to school with me, college with me, he was working at Cox Communications, which is one of, where you are in Cox, is a big telecommunications company. So corporate headquarters is Atlanta. He started working for Cox in Atlanta, and he called me and said, “Hey, we started to deploy this cable modem technology. You think you’d be interested in that?” And I’m like, “Yeah, I would love to. Yeah, I would love to do that.” So he actually helped me get into Cox Communications. He said, he basically, the director of the group was across from him. So he went to the director and said, “Hey, I have a friend. I know you’re looking for somebody.” He kind of pitched me to him, and I ended up going, traveling down to Atlanta for interviews, and literally, like within a couple of weeks they offered me a position as a data engineer, focused mainly on their broadband access, because they were just starting to launch cable modems throughout the US, and they wanted someone that had some RF experience, packets switching experience, protocols. They wanted someone that knew all of those things, and I did. And so I ended up getting a job. It was actually a senior data engineer, significant pay raise. I did have an offer from the company that we partnered with in Florida. So I actually had two job offers on the table, but broadband, internet, all the things that, it was the promise of it. I was like, “No, I gotta take the job in Atlanta.” So I did. I took the job with Cox Communications, and I effectively was the data engineer for the whole corporation until we hired a couple other people, but I was the first one in that group.

Manuel: And I have a question around that. So obviously it’s your best friend. You guys are probably keeping in contact often. And when he mentioned that cable modem, like, “Hey, we’re gonna deploy this,” are you guys also communicating the different things that you’re working on? So does he have an idea of what you did? Because obviously he’s gotta sell you internally, but he’s also, he’s selling you, right? Like, “Hey, come do this. “Here are these things.” So I’m just curious, like what from that experience, what do you think helped, you know, land that, obviously at that point, you’re landing two jobs, but what is it that kind of helped him sell you internally apart from you having that knowledge? Is it just because at that time it was specialized knowledge and you’re like, “You’re looking for somebody that has this. “I know a person that you don’t have to randomly search for.”

Taft: Yeah, it was, I think it was the unique experience that I had. So again, we’re talking, I guess, 97-ish, 98-ish. And it was very rare that you had someone that was good in packet switching and those protocols and the routing, and also had a… knew RF, because remember with MobiText, it was both the packet switching and the wireless side that fed the, so I had to learn RF networking and frequencies and reading the spectrum and all those things. So that’s what made me unique. It was hard to find that skillset at that time that could literally, I can be on the RF side reading this and say, “Oh, I see a spike in the signal “and then go to a packet analyzer and say, “Oh no, okay, yeah, it looks like he’s “sending the wrong flag here.” Like that was really unique. And me and my friend, we talked all the time, right? And he was more of a telephony telephone guy. And so to him, I just knew, you know this data thing, right? (laughs) So when he heard that there was this data thing happening at Cox, he just thought of me. And again, I did, all he really did was help me kind of get my foot in the door. I still had to interview. And the person that I interview with ended up becoming the CTO of a lot of big companies. But I had to interview with him and he wanted to see if I understood and I did. Like I said and it wasn’t anything I even had to study for because I was doing it just on a day-to-day basis. It was just natural, right? And so when we’re interviewing, he can ask me a question and I didn’t even have to think through it. I was like, “Oh no, you will want to do.” And it’s kind of like programming interviews today where they just say, “Hey, write me a program to do.” It was similar to that. But I think it was my unique blend of having that packet data protocol experience and the RF experience as well. Because again, that was rare. You either have one or the other.

Manuel: Got it, okay. Now, and that’s helpful, right? Or just helping me understand kind of what that is. Because I’ve had other people that have helped me kind of get jobs and sometimes it’s just like, “Hey, do this cool thing.” But now understanding that you also have this at the time, this very unique knowledge that, hey, we’re looking for a handful of unicorns. Hey, I know one.

Taft: That’s right.

Manuel: So, okay.

Taft: Yeah.

Manuel: So then you get over, obviously you make the decision. Was it? You already mentioned part of it, right? Hey, it’s broadband, it’s this new technology. It’s Georgia, you’re closer to your friend now. And so what kind of transpires from there?

Taft: So I had to leave my family up in the Philly area. So that was a tough, hey, look, I’m moving. Not just to Jersey, I’m moving. And that was probably the toughest part of it. The leaving RAM, so at the time it became Bellsoft Wireless and eventually that becomes Cingular and now AT&T. So leaving there was a little awkward because that was the only job I had post college. Like that was the only place I’ve ever been. So going to Cox was definitely a change. Cox is a big company. Probably wasn’t as big as, well, it may have been bigger than Bellsoft at the time. But it was just the dynamics of the engineering teams. I was no longer the alpha dog. Like when I was there, I knew everything and I can kind of pick and do like the things I wanted to get. But this one was all brand new technology. The company itself didn’t even know how they, okay, how are we going to deploy? Like again, it was very new. So again, bleeding edge, which was great. A lot more travel, which I did like. So when I first, my first day at Cox, I show up and they show me, and at the time everybody had an office. I never had office, I always sat in a cubicle, right? So all of a sudden it’s like, well, here’s your office. I’m like, really? (laughs) And I’m just an engineer, like a senior engineer, but I’m like, oh, this is cool. So I can close my door. That was great.

Manuel: Take a nap. (laughs)

Taft: So I’m in there and I’m just kind of getting acclimated. I had, my clothes were still in my car because I was going to stay with my friend at his, he had an apartment. I didn’t have a place yet. So clothes still in my car. And the plan was after work, we would go to his apartment and I can unpack and everything and just kind of settle in. About two o’clock in the afternoon, my boss walks in and says, hey, I got to put you in a fire. We got meetings and it was a partner meet in San Diego. So I’m in Atlanta and I’m like, oh, okay. When is that? He’s like, oh, you got to leave. It’s the plane. So it was the Cox plane. The Cox plane is leaving at five. They go to San Diego and then from San Diego, we had to go to Miami. So I literally, my clothes was in my car for a week because I had to leave, right? So I grabbed some stuff. (laughing) And I had like a suitcase. I threw everything out and then put stuff I needed in there. And I just went straight to the airport and then boom, I’m off to San Diego for meeting for two days, off to Miami for, cause they’re literally trying to figure out how are we going to deploy this broadband service? And they were targeting like 4 million customers at the time across all these different cities. It was big and it was overwhelming. I was like, oh man, what did I get myself into? And everybody’s expecting, I’m the guy, okay, so here’s what you’re going to do when you put together these plans. It was overwhelming. The first couple of months was overwhelming at Cox.

Manuel: And it sounds like it. So we’re outside of the technology realm. So I just kind of want to kind of find out from your own personal experience. Like this sounds like it’s a lot of big changes all at once. You’re changing, like you said, it’s the first time you moved away from family. It’s, I mean, I don’t know the differences. I’ve never been to Philadelphia, but I’ve been to Atlanta. It’s a climate change. It’s a culture change, right? Because like the South, that southern hospitality is a thing. Like that’s a thing and it’s a good thing. Now you’ve got this other senior role, which, you know, hey, I’ve got this office, you’ve got these big things. But now all of a sudden, like you’re not the top dog. Now you’re getting involved in these projects. It’s probably, everything’s overwhelming. So from a, like a personal standpoint, and I know we talk about the technology, but like from a personal career standpoint, like how did you manage that? Because I can imagine it’s hard enough to deal with one change. Like, hey, I’m moving. Even if I’m doing the same role, same type, just a different company, that’s gotta be tough. Now you’re doing a role change and a career change. And family, I mean, just what was that like?

Taft: Like I said, it was overwhelming. And I made a lot of mistakes, honestly. So I’m young, right? And my friends here, my friend is in Atlanta. We’re engineers, we’re making pretty good money. So yeah, I’m hanging out. Probably too much. There was times I hung out too much and I came into the office and wasn’t totally focused. And my boss picked up on those things pretty quick, right? And so he’s telling me, hey, listen, you gotta focus here. We’re trusting you to be the first. So I had to kind of take a step back and, I gotta say, be more disciplined. I had to learn to be more disciplined. It was easy for me just to go, but I had to, you know what, I gotta meet tomorrow. I’m just gonna sit. So I had to really kind of focus in on it because focus in on just what I needed to do because it was on new technology. So I currently live in Denver. My first trip to Denver, I was called a resident engineer at Cable Labs, which is the spec body for all the different cable operators. So they’re the ones that’s writing the spec for how to do telephone over a cable wire, how to deliver internet over the cable wire. And it’s everything from operational specs to the engineering specs, to the, it was just across the board. So Cox made me the resident engineer. So I had to spend two weeks in Denver and two weeks in Atlanta. That probably helped me because I wasn’t in Atlanta all the time. So it kind of gave me a chance that I’m with my friend who, it gave me a chance to really focus in. But going to Cable Labs, I’m around a lot of really smart people, like AWS, everybody is the best of the best from their different, from Comcast, from all these different, excellently all these different cable operators. They’re the best of the best that are in this one location and they’re writing specs, they’re testing specs, they’re doing all these things. So it just required me to just really focus more.

Manuel: And is this, I know it might come up later, but do you think, like how you mentioned your uncle before, where he was like, “Hey, you’ve got to excel.” At this point when you’re around these other people, most times, again, it can be overwhelming and say, “Hey, I don’t belong here,” or, “Hey, it’s not gonna work out, this is my level.” I’m assuming having that history of like, “Hey, you can push yourself, you’ve gotta do better.” Is that, did that happen there?

Taft: 100%, my uncle, and he had kind of laid back off me by then, he’s like, “I think you’re doing okay.” But the things that he used to drill into me, yes, at the time I kind of took him and said, “Yeah, whatever.” But I did harness things he said to me. So one of the things that he said to me that has always stuck with me is, “You are gonna be what the five closest people in your circle are.” So he’s like, “If you hang around with people that don’t get anything done, that’s where you’re gonna gravitate to. If you hang out with people, or your circle is people that are really high achievers, that’s what you’re gonna be.” And he’s absolutely right. When I started going to Cable Labs, I’m around the best of the best, and they are focused. Like, you don’t have to tell them, they’re just, they come in and they’re doing this, and you start raising your level because that’s where you have to. I’m representing my company, and I mean, there’s times I had to give presentations in front of the whole community, like the whole body. So I had to have my stuff together, because I can embarrass myself, I can embarrass… So it was that one thing he said to me when I started being around more focused, more advanced, more disciplined engineers, I became a more focused, more advanced engineer. It just was one of those things that happened. So that’s one thing he’s always said that I found to be true. You gotta surround yourself with the people that are gonna push you, because ultimately, you’re gonna fall to that level wherever, whatever that level is, it could be higher, it could be lower, you’re gonna go to that level of the people that, even he says the five closest people to you.

Manuel: And it makes sense, right? Because I’ve always heard that other term is, if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room, right? Because you’ve maxed out, and again, people aren’t gonna push you, but I like that idea, and kind of thinking back, it makes sense, right? The five people, or the people that you’re around the most.

Taft: You typically have the same similar salaries, similar job titles. Like, you ultimately are kind of this homogeneous circle, and so you always have to be trying to stretch out and kind of maybe changing the circle, or things like that. Like, if you wanna get better, you have to… And like I said, this happened to be from a job perspective. They just put me in a role and said, go to Denver. But I think that move allowed me to really mature as like an engineer.

Manuel: So now you’re improving your skillset, now you’re pushing yourself, and you’re hanging around with all these other people, and kind of what comes out of this position and being around these people?

Taft: That’s a good question. There was… I think what came out of it is, I realized that maybe my position at Cox wasn’t gonna give me the growth that I thought I needed. So the people that I end up working with all end up becoming directors and VPs and things like that. Like, they were extending in their companies, and I was kind of stagnant. So what it did is it pushed me to say, you know what, I need to… Unfortunately, and I’m having fun at Cox, but I have to start looking out for my career. So I started thinking more about where I wanted to be kind of long-term. And so I end up leaving Cox and going over to the vendor side, Scientific Atlanta, which is now Cisco. I ended up going over to Scientific Atlanta, and I went there because now I’m not the customer. Now I have customers, and now I have to make sure that what we’re providing them as a solution works. And that was a challenge too. It’s like, I’m always seeking these challenges. So that was the challenge to me. I’m not no longer in just this one ecosystem. I gotta understand Cox’s ecosystem, Comcast’s ecosystem, AT&T’s, because those were all our customers. So it forced me now to have to really broaden my technology grasp. Like, it wasn’t just like broadband cable. It wasn’t MobiTech switching. It was now they’re doing video services. So they were delivering cable services and stuff. So even though Cox did it, I was on that side of the house, right? But now I had to figure that out as well because Scientific Atlanta provided that sort of equipment. So now I’m learning all this video engineering and how to deliver TV shows and how to create video on demand assets and all these different things, which was totally away from what I was, but it was just so challenging. It was so interesting to me. So I literally pivoted to more of a video engineering background where I was supporting a lot of video deployments. And these are deployments to millions of customers and interactive guides and understanding the metadata behind it. And how is all this building? What are some of these proprietary protocols that allows a cable box to update itself in the middle of the night? And all these different things, and it was great. So like I said, so I ended up pivoting to literally leaving the, I’m gonna say the routing piece behind and getting more into this really complex world of video engineering and video compression and video distribution and satellites and all these other things. So when I went to Scientific Atlanta, that’s where I kind of positioned into that role. And then I went back to the service provider side. So now, which is probably not a good thing, I would say, hey, just kind of stick thing. But once I got kind of bored, I started, I would go look somewhere else. And so now I have this unique skillset of, I can do RF engineering, I can do data engineering, I can do video engineering. So I can do all these things, right? So I became a manager at Comcast and I was over the engineering group. So it included the cable modem or broadband engineers. I had the power techs, so everybody that did all the power to keep everything up and running. This is all throughout Atlanta. So I basically was a manager in Atlanta over the Atlanta market. So I had power techs, data engineering techs. We did the telephony, so I had the telephony techs. I did the operational pieces of it as well. So we did a lot of the operational processes and things. Now my role, now I got people working under me. So that was a whole nother dynamic. The technology, I knew very well, but now I had to hone my people skills because now I’m managing people. And as a manager, that is a much, that may be a more difficult skill to learn than a technology. Technology is easy because if you do this thing repeatedly, you’ll get the same result. People are not like that. (laughing)

Manuel: And there’s multiple different people, right? Like you can do the same, like a protocol on multiple different switches. Okay, hey, maybe it might, the command set or whatever it might be, might be a little bit different, but you’re gonna get the same results. Whereas with people, I mean, no two people are gonna, you can do the exact same thing and having to understand, okay, if I wanna push this person, they need, maybe they’re more self-driven, I don’t have to push as hard. Maybe this person has the potential, but how do I tap into that?

Taft: You have all those varying levels. And when I went to Comcast, I inherited the group that was there. So I already had these engineers stuck in their ways. And then I had to hire, hire, I guess, the engineers that I would like, right? So I did, I hired a couple, I inherited, I hired like four people, I inherited five. So now I have this bigger group, but they’re totally different. So a couple of the people that I hired were kind of self-starters. They would go and just do things like, hey, check this tool out, I built like things like that. You’re like, really? (laughing) Others was like, yeah, even if someone hired, like they were like, they’re just doing a job. You can tell that they were just really, this is cool, but they didn’t really have a dedication to it. And then you, and so how do you motivate those people, right? And I’d never managed people before. I’ve always had to worry about myself. So I mean, I supervised, but supervisor isn’t the same. They didn’t report to me. I was just a kind of like in our case where we have, one of our TAMs is kind of the lead, a TAM. That’s what I always had, but this was literally a management role, right? And it was, like I said, that was more difficult than probably any of the technology things I had to learn because you can’t motivate people the same way. You, what you take as someone not being interested could be just their personality. Like there’s all these things that you have to learn. And at first I treated everybody the same, right? Like, and quickly found out that that didn’t work out well. (both laughing) You know, so I do think that having been a manager, I do understand a little bit more around, I think that’s what makes me probably a good TAM now. People are just different. You have to approach them differently. You have to see what motivates them. You have to see what ticks them off. You have to have, how do I communicate with this person? Versus the, and there’s a lot of that that happens in our current position. You’re dealing with all these different customers and they’re just people. And they’re just different people with different motivations and different, and you just, you end up having to manage it. And so that was my first kind of realm into really having to manage people. I think I did okay, but I think I did a lot of things wrong and kind of looking back on it. (both laughing)

Manuel: And you mentioned it was your first one. Did you continue to do managing after that? Or is that one of those situations? Because I can tell you from my experience, I thought I wanted to kind of go that track. I managed once, I did it, and I enjoyed it for the most part. Most of the team was self-starters, but then you have the one, all it takes is one bad experience. I had the one where it was just, I didn’t wanna do this. Now it was helpful for me in, like you mentioned, I think it helped me in other roles because now I learn how to deal with the people element, but I never wanted to be responsible for them again.

Taft: So that was, my next role was absolutely a, a single contributor role. I did not wanna manage people. So I end up leaving Comcast. So no, so it was AT&T broadband. The Comcast buys them out. And as part of that Comcast says, we don’t run as heavy as AT&T broadband runs. So you need to identify a couple of people that we gotta let go. So now is the first time I’m having to do that sort of thing, which I totally hate it. How do you tell somebody? And literally I had to do it. And one gentleman had a reputation for being a little violent. (laughing) So I had to have HR present with me when I told him and he still like knocked the table, my desk over and everything else. But HR was there, we had a security person. Like, so again, having to deal with that as a young manager, it was tough. So as part of it, Comcast offered, hey, anybody in the management ranks, if you wanna leave, we’ll give you guys a great package. And I raised my hand, which my boss was so upset at me because he was like, I didn’t expect you to raise your hand. I wanted, he didn’t expect that a couple other people. (laughing) But I raised my hand, because I just didn’t like the role. I didn’t like having to manage people and lay people off. And I just, I couldn’t stomach it. So I just raised my hand and said, look, I wanna leave. And I left. I didn’t have a job or anything lined up, I just couldn’t do this. And so I ended up taking the package and I took a little bit of time off. And then I ended up working for a company called Big Band Networks. And they had purchased a company called ADC in Minnesota. But Big Band Networks eventually became Google and then Google sold them off to Motorola, I think. So I started working with them and it was again video engineering, some broadband. We had a broadband router and stuff. So again, my unique skill set of being able to sit on both sides of the fence was attractive that I ended up becoming a sales engineer. So now I’m on the pre-sale side and I’m traveling. That was my first like kind of sales role. So again, a whole nother challenge because now I’m trying to convince people to buy my stuff versus Cisco stuff and that’s a totally different dynamic with a customer because when you walk through the door, you’re sales. So they’re already kind of leery and are you telling me the truth? So you have to get around that as the first obstacle and you got to earn trust and you have to, it was a lot of that. So now I’m in a role, but it’s a single contributor role. So I ain’t got to worry about nobody else’s problems. And I’m able to now work on a totally different skill set on the sale side and trying to influence people and trying to convince people. That was, and that became really, really interesting to me. And now I’m in front of a lot of, I’m gonna say smart people on the customer side because when you go in, you’re meeting with their top engineer and their CTO and everybody else because they’re the ones that have to make this decision. And in that role, I learned about relationships. It’s all about relationships. They have to trust you. They’re putting their reputation on the line. They’re putting the company’s money on the line. So you really had to convince them that you’re the right, not only right company, but you’re the right partner for me, right? And so a lot of earning trust and all these different leadership principles that we have at AWS, I’m learning these at these different roles. So this one was all about relationships and all about being truthful and all about building trust and all of, and it was, those things matter more than anything else because they would literally go with you even though they thought the other person’s equipment may be slightly better, but they trusted you to make sure that we’ll get this project complete. And if something fails, you’ll fix it. Like those sort of things became a much bigger thing. So my next couple of roles, and I did work at Motorola for about four years and those roles was all about just kind of fine tuning that how to build relationships and how to build trust and how to, you still had to be technical. You still didn’t know what you’re doing, but you don’t want to convey wrong information. There was a lot of things that when you’re on the service provider side, isn’t as important, but when you get on the sales side, there’s just a different skill set that you have to leverage.

Manuel: Do you think that some of the skills that you picked up as a manager just having to do with that people skills, do you think that that helped make that transition into the sales role a lot easier?

Taft: 100%.

Manuel: Really, okay.

Taft: 100%. Not even knowing that. Not knowing that, oh, by having to manage people for a couple of years and all their issues and you had to build trust with them as well. I think these are people that work for you and you want them to run through a wall for you at times or if you call them late at night and they’re really not on call, but you need the help, they’ll be like, you know what, okay, I’ll come in. You had to build that trust. So 100%, if I didn’t have that management role, I don’t know how good I would have been in that sales role. Having that experience and understanding that, again, you approach people differently. All those things absolutely helped out on the sales side.

Manuel: So then you did the sales part for. Now, obviously you’re picking up more skills, you’re learning the value of relationships, communication, starting from the management role, right? Like how you communicate, the words that you say, how you approach it, your tone, like all of that starts to matter. So now from the sales side, what makes you kind of decide, all right, this either is for me or it’s not for me, because I’ll tell you prior to coming here, I was on the sales side and I enjoyed it. I just, the reason I kind of decided to move was I had very little experience in cloud. Like I knew of the core technology, like I knew what an EC2 instance was, I knew what S3 was, like storage, like very basic, like that was the extent of my knowledge. But I was like, well, I’m gonna get the chance to learn that, let me go, now that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the sales side, because I mean, everything has its plus and minus, but to me it was similar to you, I wanna push myself. So what kind of was your experience?

Taft: So for the next, I guess that was 2005. So for the next, I’m gonna say 10 years, I was pretty much in the sales engineering role. There’s always an account manager, he has to go ask for the money. I just have to convince them, hey, this is the solution, and we’re the right partner, things like that. So about 2016, yeah, 2016, I’m at Harmonic, and we get a management change. And so our new manager said, you know what? I don’t want just sales engineers. I need somebody that can be the sales engineer and the account manager. And so he basically said, if you can’t do both roles, then I don’t need you. So I’m like, okay, I’ve never been an account manager, I’ll take on a role. So I did, I was like, hey, I’ll do both, I think I can handle it. And so all of a sudden, I’m now an account manager. And so they give me this company, I won’t mention their name, but they had never done business with us, I’m a Harmonic at the time. They had never, they always went with our competitor, which is Motorola and other people. I get handed this account, and my boss is like, okay, you need to make something out of this account. So I’m like, okay. Now, the thing that I had is as a sales engineer, that was one of the companies that was someone that I supported, right? So I knew the VP of engineering, so I already kind of knew them from a sales engineering role, but now I’m the account manager. And from a sales engineering role, they did use, actually, let me back, they did use our equipment for kind of broadband and internet access, but they never used it for video. So as an account manager, they wanted me to build the video business. So I had to convince them to buy our video equipment, compression, things like that. And now I’m the account manager. So when they announced me as the account manager, everybody at the company’s like, Taft, really? So I had to overcome that barrier because he just engineer, no I’m the account manager now. And so long story short, I built it up to like a $2 million a year business. They were buying our equipment, but it took a lot. And again, I’m doing both roles. So I’m in a lab doing all the testing. And then I’m also the guy that has to call up the CEO and say, hey, it’s down to the end of the quarter. I know we were thinking about having this done in the next quarter, but can you actually buy it this quarter? Because I’m getting that pressure from my, it’s a total sales piece of it, right? So we got to meet our quarterly number. They see this thing and they say, you gotta get the customer to pull us in. There was no: ifs ands or buts, you gotta get. So now I’m having to ask the customer for money. I’m having to ask the customer to trust us and pull it. And that was a totally different skill set. I mean, I never had to do it. I always had an account manager to do that. And now I’m the person that has a quota. And now I have to meet this quota, right? It was a challenge, but we did build the business up. And again, I think me having that technical background, because I was able to walk into the video side, which I hadn’t even talked to. And they’re like, oh yeah, he actually kind of knows what he’s doing. And I’m like the account manager, right? And now I have, occasionally they’ll bring in a field engineer. So that’s how my, we don’t want somebody dedicated, but when you need some additional help, we can get someone from the field engineering group to do it and they will fly in and kind of do these things. So I will bring in field engineers and then I’m showing them, nah, nah, nah, nah, let’s do this. And I’m kind of showing them and I’m the account manager. So it gave me a little bit more cachet and trust. And so yeah, they started going with us and things broke a lot. And I was right there. I’m like literally leaving my house. (laughing) And cause I’m like, I can’t, this thing cannot fail. Like they will not fail. And that’s what I did. So again, it was a change of roles to a pure account manager role that allowed me to stretch my, I’m gonna say people, business skills even more. And I started getting a little bit more away from the technology and really into kind of, I’m gonna say strategy and just how do we get their business and things like that.

Manuel: Were you able to pick up some of those skills watching like when you’re paired with an account manager? Like were you working that close enough to where you can at least pick up a couple things and say, well maybe, or are they putting you to training? Like what did they do to kind of help set you up for success? Or what did you end up having to do on your own?

Taft: So they did put us through training. Even as Sales Engineers, we went to a lot of the sales training, but we didn’t, I won’t say we didn’t take it serious, but it was like, okay, yeah, the value prompter, yeah, whatever. That sort of stuff. But I did have a couple of account managers that were really, really good that are like mentors. And both of them have been like CTOs of companies and they’re just, they were really, they came up the way that they managed customers and it was all about the customer, right? I mean, to the point where they would get into the fight with our internal product, like fighting for their customer. And so being on a road with them, hearing them strategize, yeah, well we’re gonna get into this meeting because this is how I think we should handle it. That’s where I learned the biggest part. And again, it’s two people that I’m thinking of. I don’t wanna say their name because I don’t know. But they are the ones that literally helped me feel more confident and take them on that role. Because I just emulated a lot of things that they did. Because what they did was phenomenal. And I was around some bad ones too. So I can then also contrast that a lot even if I did some bad stuff. And so yeah, that really helped me out.

Manuel: And you bring up a good point there is a lot of times, I know we see sometimes like the end result and there’s nothing wrong with trying to, I wanna say attain that. But I mean, why would you go through and reinvent the wheel if you’ve seen what success looks like and you’ve obviously seen what success doesn’t look like. Like it’s okay and I think something important for people to know is it’s okay to, I don’t wanna say copy everything but trying to emulate or strive for what you see that this person does this really well. Like man, Taft is really good at this. Okay, pick his brain, try and find out and emulate. And it’s not a guarantee, but if there’s a better chance that you’re gonna hit your goals or your milestone’s following somebody else as opposed to, well, they’re successful, they’re doing this, well, I’m gonna try it this way. Again, you could be just as successful, but again, why not try and leverage somebody else?

Taft: Agree, that’s one of the things I would give, especially young people getting into technology and stuff, find a mentor, find somebody that you, that is a sim… that they’re doing the right thing and mimic it, like they’re doing it right. Just kind of figure out, and if you have a relationship with them where you can then ask them questions and things like that, do that as well, but at a minimum, try to figure out what they are doing right, what is, oh man, wait, and try to mimic that. That’s the one thing that I wish I told my young self at the time is seek out somebody and really try to figure out how to, now some of them seek, sought me out and was able to kind of carry me and bring me on, especially like when I started at RAM Mobile Data. My friend Paul, he literally kind of taught me how to go from being this kid from the street to being like a little, a young corporate engineer. Like there was things I had to learn and he was willing to do it, but I didn’t seek him out. He sought me out, because I guess he saw the potential, right? And all I’m saying is when you’re young, try to seek those opportunities out. That’s where you’re going to learn, honestly, a lot of the, when I was a manager at Comcast, I think the reason I struggled is I didn’t really study my previous managers, because I had some that I thought were really good, but I never like focused in on why they were good, the why in it, like why are they doing it? And all of a sudden I become a manager and I don’t leverage, because I hadn’t really paid attention to those, I was just stuck on the technology and not thinking about the people. And then all of a sudden you get in this position and you don’t have anything to, it’s like a parent, you don’t have anything to just kind of use as a reference to this is what’s good and this is what’s bad, right? So I had to learn that on the fly, but from an account manager perspective, I just was lucky to have a couple of account managers that I got teamed with for a couple of years. And that’s a couple of years of just really getting mentorship in how to be account manager. I mean, that’s literally what it was. So when I became an account manager, the toughest part of it was the company that they gave me just, I already had a relationship, but it was at a lower level or at a different role. So having to build that role up, I think if I was brand new coming in, I probably would have gotten a little easier run, but because I was an engineer, they were like, so then they, when I go ask them for money, they were like, “Eh, I don’t think we want to pay you.” And when they’re joking about it, but they made it hard on me. But it was looking back on and we’re still like, when they come to Denver for like different shows, they always look me up and say, “Hey, Taff”, I actually met one a couple months ago and we just went out for beers and just kind of hung out. And he’s the VP of engineering at this company, senior VP of engineering at this company.

Manuel: But that goes to the point that you mentioned, right? Is when you’re in those types of roles, it’s about relationships. Like you built a relationship outside of just, “Hey, I’m asking you for money.” You put in the time and, “Hey, what do you need? How can I help you?” And over time they picked that up to where now, like you said, it’s been years. And they’re like, “Oh, we know Taft is in Denver. Well, let’s seek him out. Let’s have beers.” Because if you don’t do those types of activities, right? You don’t build a relationship. One, they’re not gonna give you the money. They’re not gonna buy your stuff. And two, they might be in Denver all the time. And, “Oh, Tafts there? They’ll do the opposite. Let’s avoid that.”

Taft: That’s right. 100% 100% So interesting enough. So I decided to take on another manager role. I did. So COVID hits. I’m actually at a company called MobiTV, which is now TiVo. And what Mobi did is they built their own cloud solution. So you mentioned one again, it’s a cloud. And we had started a little bit at Harmonic where some of our hardware platforms were becoming virtual platforms and things like that. We ran some stuff at Amazon. But going to Mobi, we built everything. So we did Isilon storage, which is basically S3 at Amazon. We had our own compute instances. Everything was, and what Mobi did is Mobi offered basically a cable service, but it was for municipalities, like the gas company. If they wanted to start offering cable TV, we would basically deliver a cloud-based cable TV solution that all their customers had to do was like load the app on their phone or on the TV or on Firestick. And all of a sudden they got every channel, right? 300, 400 channels. But those 300, 400 channels were all built in a cloud. And it was our own self-built cloud. So that actually taught me a lot about all the different cloud components because we use MariaDB for certain things. So again, different database systems based on what we’re doing. But long story short, we hit COVID, MobiTV is a small company, and they basically lay off a bunch of people, and they end up keeping me. So I’m a solutions architect at the time. So I’m on the pre-sale side. I’m teaching customers about analytics, all this other stuff, right? And they decided to keep me, but they said, well, we’re gonna move you over to a TAM role. So now in their case, it’s called post-sales or support, but we just, we wanna keep your knowledge here. So I went from being a solutions architect to being a TAM. So that was my first TAM role, and I got 33 customers, (laughs) and I’m doing weekly, I’m doing calls with them. So pretty much all of things, and this is our cloud solution. So I don’t even have a specialist to turn to. We’re the specialists, right? And so that was difficult, and we had to take a pay cut for that as well. With that, I decided that it was time for me to probably move on. I’m not sure how long this is going to last. And I saw this managers role in Denver, so I’m in Atlanta at the time for Dish Network, manager of the sales engineering group. I’m like, you know what, let me just, I’ve done it before, I think I can do it, and end up going through a really brutal interview process to the point where my boss was like, we think we wanna hire you, but we just, we need some really good references. Our CEO needs like this position, it kinda gets funneled up. And I was able to put down the two mentors I had, because they were both CTO companies at a time. The VP of engineering, I said, so all of a sudden I put together this reference list that was, and they called all of them, but if I hadn’t built those relationships, so not even customer relationships, these are just kind of networking relationships, personal relationships, to be able to put them on a reference sheet for one of the biggest companies in the country, Dish Network, and I was able to, and they offered me the job, just based on the fact, I mean, I did the interviews right, but just the fact that I can leverage those sort of contacts, because they said, in this role, we expect you’re gonna be talking to these level of people, and we just wanna make sure that there’s something that you can do. Okay. So again, that’s why I was able to leverage my kind of personal career relationships to help kind of move into this other position.

Manuel: And I don’t think that’s something that’s come up in the past, but that’s, I mean, that’s very important, is I know a lot of times people may not like their job, they may not like who they work with, but having sounds like not only knowledge, right, because that’s gonna help you, but also the relationships and being a good coworker, right, or being a good supervisor or an employee, whatever that might be, and I’ve heard stories, right, like I don’t know any personally, but people have burned bridges, and you never know when somebody within your network is gonna help. Like I’ve always heard of the story of where somebody goes through and like, hey, like your buddy, hey, I’ve got a job, or like in that context, probably once or twice where I’ve had to give references, I don’t know if they’ve ever called them, but it does make sense, is building that relationship, having that type of contact to where if somebody does call, what are they gonna say when you’re not in the room? Like I’ve heard of people helping promote you, it’s your reputation precedes you, right, it’s everything around that.

Taft: Your reputation is everything, and they’re all saying it’s not what you know is who you know, that’s 100% true. It’s not, relationships are both external, and I wouldn’t say external, it’s customers or different departments, and it’s internal, your team, the people that maybe work for you, that you work for, all of those things matter, and you never know when you’re gonna have to cross that bridge. So in that case with Dish, they were very specific about what type of reference, they didn’t want an engineer, they didn’t want a man, they said we want some executive references in order to, again, that was one of their gates to see, because it was me and another person that was, I guess the final two, and that was the one, and so again, being able to reach out to executives and say hey, I’m looking at this position, you may get a call, just if you give me the honest opinion of me, would it be okay for them to call you? And every one of them said yep, no problem.

Manuel: That’s awesome.

Taft: And that’s great.

Manuel: And I know we’re getting towards the end of your career, and pretty soon shortly after that, you’re at your current role, but one of the things, we’re kinda wrapping this up, is I just wanna kinda give you the opportunity, is there anything that, in the conversation, and I’m sure we can keep talking, there’s more experiences, and at some point, like I’ve told a couple other guests, if you’re open to it, I would love to have you back at some point in the future, and just kinda fill in some of those other gaps, ask other questions, and then kinda continue on, but I wanna give you the opportunity, is there anything that I haven’t asked you, anything that you wanna talk about that we probably haven’t discussed, that you’re like hey, this is kinda your parting thoughts, like hey, if I had to say one thing of, a challenge that I overcame, something, you talked about it, right? There’s times where there’s things that, when we’re younger, that, similar to you, right? I was in Vegas, and there’s times where I didn’t take my work as seriously as I should have, so is there anything that you kinda wanna end this on?

Taft: Yeah, I think, when I think back to just my overall career, I think I’ve done a lot of really great things, and some of it was timing, like the internet was just starting to ramp up, and these new technologies started kinda increasing in pace where every six to 12 months, it was changing and getting better and better, so part of it was timing, but I will say, the biggest thing I would kind of, and again, I’d tell my young self, is have a goal, I really think through, I’m getting into this industry, where do I wanna be? And then always be marching towards what you think that is, and you may not even know what it is, and so you have to just try to project out, like okay, where, you get asked that question in a lot of interviews, and I don’t think a lot of people, I won’t say that, because I don’t know, but I know I didn’t, I would kinda just throw things out there, and I think if I would’ve thought more about, because one of the things that I’m seriously thinking about is, hey, what does product management look like, where you own the product, and you’re the CEO of that product, and you gotta, it’s a whole, it takes it to all these different skill sets, people, and selling, and technology, and all those things, but you gotta build up experience doing that, and I kinda wish I would’ve thought of that a lot earlier, where I could’ve focused in on that, and maybe kind of chart my own path, right? I did things, I was always jumping into new technologies, but it may have been undisciplined kind of jumps, and I would just say, hey, just try to think about, where you think you wanna be, and when you think about it, think about a person that you, is a Steve Jobs, like Steve Jobs, and then figure out what his path was, and maybe kind of take your own path, take more control of your own path. I think that’s what I would kinda leave it with, because when you’re young, or even when you’re not young, sometimes you’re just not thinking of that, and I think if you can think of that, then you can really start going for the right jobs, and going for, like, you can really start controlling, getting to where ultimately you think you wanna be.

Manuel: Right, and just being aware that it may not work out exactly 100% of how you think, but there’s a better framework, right? Like, you have a better control of what you think you’re gonna go, and you might still pivot, but you have a better understanding, and when you pivot, okay, now, what is this?

Taft: You see the pivot, right? And you can kinda just pivot to it, and like I said, when I went from data engineering and video compression to that, yeah, those were all pivots, but sometimes I feel like they were, again, it just wasn’t disciplined enough. Like, I could’ve kind of figured out, oh, no, I wanna do this, and kind of stay there, and that’s the one thing that I, when I look back on my young self, that’s what I would tell my young self.

Manuel: Well, again, I appreciate you coming on and kind of sharing your experiences, your stories. I’ve enjoyed it. I wish we could keep going on, and like I said, at some point, I wanna bring you on again and kinda continue on, and maybe by then, we’ll have some feedback. People will say, hey, I’m curious about this part or that part, so I can kind of have additional questions to ask you outside of what I think is interesting.

Taft: Okay, sounds good. (laughing) Sounds good. I appreciate you, again, let me talk, and again, I would love to come back if you would have me.

Manuel: Definitely.

Taft: Sounds good, man. Appreciate it.

Manuel: And for everybody else, thank you again for tuning in, and remember to, as always, go ahead and plug in and download the knowledge and give me feedback. Like I mentioned, to Taft, if there’s any questions, anything that you’re more curious about, again, kinda provide that information so that I know what you are all interested in. So, thank you.