From Programmer to CIO with Dennis Moriarity | Ep061

Manuel Martinez: Welcome everyone, my name is Manuel Martinez and this is another episode of Career Downloads. For each episode I basically hit the refresh button, bring on a different guest to learn more about how they’ve managed their career over time. And today I have with me Dennis Moriarty. I’m excited because he and I have crossed paths back when I used to be a VMware SE. He’s moved up into leadership roles and just the way that he went through and just, like I tell people all the time, there’s no one way to get to a specific role and just the way that you go about getting there, the things that you learn along the way. So Dennis has a very interesting story. So I’m excited to kind of go through and dig in a little bit more into that. So with that, I’ll go ahead and introduce Dennis.

Dennis Moriarity: Hello everybody, Dennis Moriarty, Chief Information Officer with Link Technologies.

Manuel Martinez: So like I mentioned to people before, so you’re CEO with Link Technologies. So if you don’t mind just kind of telling us a little bit about kind of your current role and responsibilities and then we’ll kind of start the story at the beginning and work our way to how you actually got to where you’re at now.

Dennis Moriarity: Yeah, in my current capacity, really what we try to do is we’re gonna come into your place of business or whatever, and we’re gonna try to help you identify any gaps you may have or if you have a specific project in mind, how we can help you execute that project. I also help Link internally, right? With the technologies we’re choosing on how to grow our business, how to service our clients even better.

Manuel Martinez: So now we’ll kind of start the beginning. So if you tell us a little bit about where you grew up and then eventually what got you either interested in technology and if you didn’t start in technology, kind of what you thought you were gonna do and how you thought you were gonna start your career.

Dennis Moriarity: All right. So from California, LA area, how did I get into technology? My father, my father was a mainframe programmer, assembly language, all that. He came home one day, he got tired of me playing video games and threw a book at me and said, “If you wanna play these, then learn how to make them.” And it was… Learn C in 24 hours or something like that. And I did, I read the book, I did everything and I fell in love with it. And I think the first program I wrote was a full blown email program that the book kind of helped you write. And from there, there was no turning back. I just loved, I fell in love with the process of programming and how to look at the world differently from a programmer’s lens and what I could affect through programming.

Manuel Martinez: And if I remember the way that you’re, kind of like that exposure, like you mentioned, like programming and building something, was it the process of seeing something that you’re writing and basically in words and letters to seeing something that’s functional, like you said, the email program, like building it, testing it and saying like, “Oh, this is what I can do.” And if I build it this way, here’s how, this will affect the way it looks, the way it operates. But then also I’m sure there’s that challenge of, because I took a couple of programming classes and at the time I was like, this is not for me because a comma in the wrong place, a period might set me and take me hours to figure out just because again, I was just like, I don’t enjoy this.

Dennis Moriarity: The creation part of it is absolutely the most fun and seeing the consumer be able to utilize it and if it’s the way you intended. But there’s also the other side of programming, of figuring out the challenges. Sometimes you’re using a program and you’re like, “Oh, why doesn’t it do this?” Well, I could go, well, I could make it do that, right? So building extensions on existing programs, expanding on DLL’s or anything else like that, was always so fun to me. And one of the common kind of things I had with, it was actually, I was teaching my wife how to be a programmer and I had wrote a game engine and she did something that caused it to crash and I couldn’t figure it out. And I think it took me about a whole day and all it was, just to make you laugh, she made a frog croak and when one frog croaked, she wanted the other frog to croak back, but that caused the other. So we ended up in this endless loop of frogs croaking and it would just crash the server and I would have to bring it back up and try to figure it out. And then she finally told me she put those in the game because I thought it was a change I made, but it was actually what she did. So it was a lot of fun and investigation. But that’s part of the programming aspect of it is, the syntax errors, the commas or the semicolons and things like that, those are, to me, the fun part of the challenge of, especially if you’re working in production and you just had a big project go live and there’s a problem and you’re like, I wanna dig in and I wanna find it.

Manuel Martinez: So it was more the problem solving aspect of it like you said, writing extensions, like, oh, it doesn’t do that. Well, I can solve that problem and then just even something that you did write or maybe co-wrote with somebody. All right, it’s the challenge of solving and fixing a problem.

Dennis Moriarity: Yeah, and with programming, there’s no limit, right? If you know the libraries or the language or whatever it is that you’re trying to interact with, there’s no limit. And so it’s a limit based on your own imagination, which is always fun.

Manuel Martinez: Yeah, so then you kind of built this first email program, you fell in love with it. Is it at that point? And I don’t remember if this is like high school age or where that was, but did you think, I’m gonna make a career out of this or is it just like, I enjoy this and this will be something fun to do on the side?

Dennis Moriarity: You know, I never really thought about it as a career. I was in high school, I think I was 14, maybe 15 at the time and… I wanted to be a police officer, right? Like that was my thing. I always kind of saw myself in the military and police officer and things just didn’t work out that way. Actually, I know when I was 18, I actually applied for the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and didn’t make it in. So I don’t know why, I don’t tell you, or else I ended up in that path. But as we went down the programming path, I started college a little later in life and I went to college at about 20-21. Then I dropped out, I started a business I sold some products that I was programming and that was super like, oh, I could do this and then, not to date myself, but then the dot com bust happened and I was like, oh no, I can’t get any more work. And at the time, my now wife convinced me to go to college and actually get my degree and that’s kind of how I got into the corporate world. Through all that, we… I got my internship through college and then went into Wall Street and kind of down that path.

Manuel Martinez: And then, so when you went back to college, having built applications and you have this programmer knowledge, is that kind of, you decided, all right, I’m gonna go for a CS degree? Was it, okay, I’m gonna do a business degree? Because now you’re like, well, I’m gonna go to the corporate world- The corporate world… The dot com. For most people, it does one or two things. Okay, I’m gonna push through this and yes, there was the bubble and it kind of burst, but at some point, it’s gotta go back up and I’ll stick with it or other people will say, nope, I don’t wanna have to go through that again. I’m gonna go do a business degree or finance because you mentioned you got into the finance, so.

Dennis Moriarity: I didn’t have that kind of vision of, oh, it’ll come back. I thought “oh, it’s done” I did go to college for CS, but I did it probably for the easy road. I already knew how to do it. I actually ended up teaching a couple classes because the instructor was kind of out of touch with it and he asked me because he knew my background if I would actually teach some of his classes and I did and it was fun. And that’s kind of what got me hooked, but when I went to college the second time, I went for infrastructure. So on totally opposite side because I wanted to understand both sides of how everything operates, not just from a programmer’s perspective. Programmers sit more on the business end, not so much. Well, it’s a little different nowadays, but back then it was all, if you were a programmer, you were on the business side and if you were infrastructure, you were just an IT guy. No one knew you, you were that guy in the closet. So I kind of wanted to learn that aspect. Thankfully, when I went through that, I realized that’s not what I want to do and I wanted to stick with programming.

Manuel Martinez: You mentioned that at one point the instructor asked you to teach a couple classes. Is that something you felt comfortable doing? And when I say comfortable, not teaching it, but more kind of being in front of a class and in front of other people and because I don’t know what the statistics are, but so many people are deathly afraid of public speaking and things of that nature. Or is it something you’re like, well, this is probably gonna benefit me? Was it just, well, I’m so passionate about the technology that speaking about it just didn’t seem like, oh, I’m publicly speaking. I just want to tell people about this cool thing that I know about.

Dennis Moriarity: Yeah, it’s more the latter where I just loved programming and if you would put me in front of people, I would enjoy it. And I didn’t really think about the people because we were walking through code. The fun part about teaching some of those classes is we went above and beyond, not just teaching the basics. We really hammered home a lot of advanced techniques through some of those courses. And I think that really helped the students enjoy the class more because they weren’t just leading, learning what was in the books. They were learning from my real world experience as well.

Manuel Martinez: And I think you’re right. People taking those types of courses because I teach part time, I would teach VMware and they get that enjoyment because it’s not just textbook stuff. You’re pulling in real world experience like, yes, fundamentally or per book, this works really well, but here’s a real use case or here’s a little bit extra that you’re not gonna find in a textbook that I know because I failed or it took me two years to figure this out. Here, I’m gonna give it to you in this 30 minute section. So now you’ve kind of gone back, you get your degree, then you mentioned you went into finance. Or into the finance industry. What was that internship? What was the internship for? And kind of what were you doing there?

Dennis Moriarity: Yeah, the internship was for a company called Bank of New York at the time. They… They basically are a bank of banks. There’s no retail branches or you can’t walk into Bank of New York. So it was actually kind of funny the way everything worked out because going into the internship, I was probably one of the most overqualified interns. I had programming experience, real world, everything. And I didn’t have any experience on the mainframe. I had experience in C, C++, even some C sharp at the time. And they put me on the mainframe team and I was like, what are you doing? Like, this is what I do over here. But it was the best thing they could have done. It was super eye-opening to see the difference in the programming patterns and everything else that you go through with like a COBOL and a JCL and other things versus a newer language like a C or C++ or even C sharp. So I got my internship there. I think after a year of the internship, they hired me. And they hired me directly into kind of a lead programmer role. I had a small team. I was on the mainframe team, but we were doing one of the largest projects that the bank was undergoing, which was splitting out the two regions. So think of when you’re processing, stock market transactions, they’re worldwide. Well, we had an issue where our Asia market would be closing and our America market would be coming up and they were stepping on each other because they were using the same files. So we had to split them out and do a big thing. Anyways, so that was really cool for me because that was a massive, massive project. And the Bank of New York was so structured with how you had to submit a change and the process you had to go through. Even if you were just changing one little character, you had to go through the whole process. It didn’t matter. And there was a design review process and a code review process and everything that really taught me why your process and everything that’s in place is super important. Right? So, yeah.

Manuel Martinez: I have two questions there. I’m gonna start with the first one. Coming in as an intern and like you said, a little bit overqualified and probably older than most of the interns that were coming in, right? Because they’re coming out of college, a little bit younger that experience and that kind of situation. The reason I bring that up is a lot of times people are trying to get into tech. They might be making a career change. Some people might be uncomfortable with the fact that I’m older or I’m starting at a lower level. And you mentioned like I’m overqualified, but you’re overqualified and you might be learning different skill sets. So what was that experience and kind of what do you think you took away from not being like everybody else? For somebody that’s kind of listening or watching and saying, “Oh, okay, it’s okay for me to take,” I don’t wanna say a lower position, but something where you’re like, “Well, I’m overqualified for this,” but you mentioned that you did learn from that experience. Like they put me in COBOL. Like why would you do that? My experience is here. So kind of what was that like?

Dennis Moriarity: Yeah, so actually the internship was one of the coolest things I ever did. We had a very diverse group of individuals. Of course they were all younger than me, right? But at the same time, they had a different perspective on it because they were coming in new, right? I was kind of the old hat. I had been around the block. I knew how to program. I knew how to structure things, but they knew different languages than I knew. And we would bounce a lot of ideas off of each other. Which language should we use to execute this and that? And I remember speaking with various interns about how to solve problems, solutions that how they would approach it, how I would approach it. We would both try it and then see who had a better result. So it was extremely, thankfully they didn’t treat me like the old guy, right? They were very cool with me. But at the same time, I got to learn a lot from them. This wasn’t about, “Oh, Dennis has done this. Let’s just use him.” No, this was a learning experience for everybody.

Manuel Martinez: And is that something that you took that as like, “Hey, I wanna learn.” Was it more kind of them or is it seem like just, it organically happened from both sides. Like, “Hey, I wanna learn a little bit from Dennis that he has experience.” But then at the same time, they’re probably like, “Well, I know things that he doesn’t know.”

Dennis Moriarity: Yeah, it was very organic. I mean, the group, the fellowship or whatever you wanna call it that they brought in was just organically great together. And we all went to different teams. Not a lot of us were on one team. I went to one team and I was by myself. There were no other interns on the team with me until the second cohort came in and then they added more interns to my team. But to start, I was the only intern. So I was doing mainframe where other guys were doing C++ and C-sharp and Java. And they were doing some of the newer technologies. And I was stuck doing mainframe. They weren’t gonna come ask me mainframe questions, but they would come, thankfully I knew some of the newer languages, so they would come and ask me. I would come and ask them because there were things we had to do on the mainframe that were similar to what you would do with a Java or a C++.

Manuel Martinez: Now the other question that I had is you mentioned they had a strict process around making changes. What did you learn from that experience and why would they do it that way? And again, I don’t think there’s a wrong or right answer because it’s based on the organization and their process. But what did you learn about, okay, they’re a strict process. Like if I wanna go and make a comma change, why does it have to go through the whole process review versus, especially now, there’s agile, we can go through and make changes quickly. And a lot of the checks are automated. It’s not like back when you had a change control process, hey, let’s review, let’s make sure we get all the approval. So kind of what did you learn from that experience?

Dennis Moriarity: A lot. I learned it takes forever to make a change. So if you wanna make a change, you plan it. So there was a lot of planning involved. It was still very waterfall… back then. So if we were making a comma change or a character change, we had to plan 30 days out for that change to go live in production. So there was a lot planning And you wanted to try to group as many changes together as possible so that they could all get reviewed at the same time. Because if you were submitting one small change at a time, you’re gonna stack them up week after week. And you had to monitor your changes, right? So a lot of changes we’d make for the Asian market and they’re running overnight for America. So we’re up all night monitoring our changes and things. So you really learned how the logistics of how to make your changes is efficient as possible. The other thing is you learn that in a highly regulated industry like Wall Street or finance, there’s reasons for all that. There’s the paperwork and when you do get audited that you can prove that this is why we did X, Y and Z. The other big part is with the change control process, you’re working with folks that have done it for a lot more years than you have and they understand why things were done the way they are. And that gives you that institutional knowledge to go, oh, maybe I shouldn’t make that change because it could mess up downstream, whatever. So- but it also taught me that that process doesn’t fit everywhere. As you go to smaller businesses or whatever it is, what the bank did is not gonna work at a Link Technologies or even at a city or anything like that because of the cumbersome process that it was.

Manuel Martinez: And I like the part that you mentioned about the planning, right? Making sure and it’s, I think sometimes with speed comes, okay, well, I’ll just, I’ll make the changes I can course correct it. And it’s really finding kind of that balance and also depends, like you said, on the industry, on all those different things. From a kind of long-term planning perspective, and I know we’re gonna get to it a little bit in the future, but is that something that you were pretty good at and I just helped you get better at saying, okay, I have to think a little bit more holistically, I have to talk to these different people, or was it something that that role specifically gave you the opportunity to learn and develop that skill?

Dennis Moriarity: Yeah, I was terrible at it. So, yeah, I remember I was a one man shop, so I could just make changes and do whatever I wanted. There was no one to code or review my changes, no one knew it, I was the only person. So moving into that role really taught me how to communicate and sometimes I didn’t wanna go through with the change control process… fully until I spoke with someone and said, hey, do we think this is right? Because I don’t wanna submit it and waste everyone’s time. And they’re like “you don’t even know” “what you’re doing.” Right? So it became my way of learning how to collaborate within the team a lot better because 99% of your coworkers wanna help you. They don’t wanna see you fail. So it’s a lot easier to reach out and ask someone a question, hey, is this right? And back then, we used Lotus Notes, but a lot of our team was worldwide. The team I started on was in Syracuse New York We collaborated with a lot of folks that were in New York City. And then as I moved into different positions, I started working with folks in Ireland and folks in India. And we really had to learn how to collaborate in a more efficient manner because we didn’t wanna waste everyone’s time putting them through a cab or a change advisory board for no reason, because it’s just gonna get shot down because you don’t know what you’re doing.

Manuel Martinez: And how long did you spend there in that industry? And you kinda mentioned you started to grow and kind of work with different teams. Was that something that you were able to kind of not only progress your skillset and build communication skills and things of that nature, but also it sounds like you were able to kind of move up within roles or responsibilities.

Dennis Moriarity: Yeah, how long was I there? I always get this wrong because I think I overestimate every time, but it was 11 years? I believe. I started there as an intern. I took the lead developer position from there. I went into a production support manager role, which was strictly for software. It wasn’t for any sort of hardware or anything like that. It was strictly on the software side. After that, I got moved into what they call a VP role. And it was oversight of multiple applications from 401k balancing to getting the prices out to the street. So Wall Street. So that was kind of my career progression. I went from mainframe to a C++ application to a C sharp application to developing applications from the ground up.

Manuel Martinez: And one of the things, I’m glad you summarized kind of the different roles and responsibilities like VPs and overseeing things is it happens a lot in tech, where… you’re really good at what you do. And there’s the opportunity to kind of go through and get promotions to the point where you are no longer a primary practitioner, Right? You’re not the person doing all the work. You’re learning how to collaborate, how to kind of communicate, give direction. What were some of the struggles that you encountered doing that? Like moving up and kind of overseeing teams. Again, I highly doubt, and I could be wrong, but it wasn’t a seamless process, right? We all learned through that process. I’ve done it. I’m just curious, like what are some of the, kind of looking back now, what are some of the takeaways and what are some of the things like, oh, that really, I struggled there, but that helped me now or when I was eventually at the city or some of these other roles.

Dennis Moriarity: I can’t say I struggled moving into management. And I actually just thought about this. Some of our younger audience may appreciate this, but in my younger days, I was a big gamer and I actually ran what they call a clan. So I had other gamers that kind of worked for me and we competed professionally. So that leadership skill was kind of very instilled in me in a young age. I also played a lot of sports. I was the captain of the football team, captain of the baseball team, et cetera. So I don’t think moving into leadership was an issue for me, but I know where you’re coming from because as we move up, usually, especially on the software side, we have an option. You can go into management or you can go into architecture. Those are your two choices. And if you wanna be that individual contributor, you go up the architecture side. And if you wanna go into the leadership kind of managing people, you go into the manager side. I was never given the option for the architecture. It was here’s your next role, do you want it? And I wasn’t gonna say no. So I moved into management. The only drawback was I was still extremely hands-on. I was still looking at code. I was still changing code on a regular basis. Even six years into management, I was still doing that. Towards the end of my tenure at the bank, I started architecting new solutions but I was a manager. I had a team, I think I had a team of 60 or so folks. So I was having a hard problem really taking a step back and saying, “Hey, I have people to do this.” And at the bank, there was 20,000 IT employees. So I could have called another team and said, “Hey, I need you to” “architect.” We had a whole architecture team. And I was really struggling with, I don’t wanna say, Well, we’ll just say it, delegation, right? Because I didn’t wanna lose my technical skills because I thoroughly enjoyed having my technical skills.

Manuel Martinez: That’s such a great point Is… I think, like you said, younger folks or even people who have been in there before is understanding, because one of the things that’s come up a lot is transferable skills. And not until you said it, did it really click in my mind that, okay, you can be a gamer and still kind of lead, you can be the lead of the clan. If you’re in sports, I played sports as well. I wasn’t usually like the official captain, so I played baseball, I was a catcher. And as a catcher, you’re kind of helping, you’re working with your pitcher and like, “Hey, this is the pitches that we gotta go.” You’re kind of looking, you’re the architect of, or you’re the person kind of directing what’s going on. Like obviously there’s a coach, but I had to learn to be vocal and kind of have signals to kind of let other people know like, “Hey, here’s what we’re doing.” So if I’m telling the pitcher, “Hey, throw a fastball,” I also have to be able to communicate with, it’s a right-handed batter, left-handed batter, and apologize for people that don’t know a lot of sports, but, “Hey, this is” “what we’re gonna do” There’s a chance that this person, if they’re batting from the right-hand side, if we’re throwing a fastball, he might be slow. So, “Hey, person on” “the right-hand side” “of the field,” “there’s a chance” “the ball’s going to you” “be prepared.” And that’s such a good skill set. So knowing that if you wanted to go into management, there’s, it’s not necessarily, I’ve never been a manager, but have you taken on roles? And I recently spoke with Brie, and she mentioned something similar to where she has taken part in external organizations. SIM comes up a lot where she’s a secretary so learning how to delegate and work with other people. So that’s a skill set that, I think it’s good, and I don’t think it’s ever come up before, is look at your past experiences, and that could make it so that it’s, one, not such of a challenge, or may not be as scary. Like, “I’ve run a” “clan before” like, “okay, I can give” “this a try,” right? Like… it’s not… one for one, but there’s a good… chance that a lot of those skill sets will transfer over. Would you agree?

Dennis Moriarity: Oh, absolutely. We had a lot of drama, you know, in the gaming world, you know, from a clan. The other thing I did was I ran a guild, in a very popular game called World of Warcraft, and we ran it for years. And it was my wife and I who ran it. And we, you know, you get that interpersonal drama in gaming, and you have to address it, because, you know, ultimately you don’t want it to be, not be a fun experience for somebody So, in the clan world when we were doing that, that was nationwide That wasn’t a local thing, you know, I had players in North Carolina, and we had them, you know, all across the US. we had to learn how to communicate and use those tools to, hey, are you having a problem? What’s the problem? But, at the same time, in the competition of that we were coming up with strategies and we were planning. So, I was kind of used to all of that, even though I say I was terrible when I went into the bank about planning my code changes, because what I always knew was a very agile process. I just programmed it, I compiled it, it worked, cool. Okay, let’s do the next thing. Oh, it didn’t, let me change it. In the banking world, obviously it doesn’t work like that. My biggest mistake in the banking world was when I made a change, I thought I did everything right. I went through design review, I went through the change advisory board, I went through everything and it all passed and it went into production, and I didn’t monitor it. And it caused a huge outage. And I got a call in the middle of the night and was like, hey, your change is failing in production And thankfully our senior developer knew exactly what I changed and just went and fixed it. But I tested for 99 out of 100 scenarios And it was the one scenario I didn’t test that ended up coming up in production. So you’re still gonna make mistakes, no matter how seasoned you are or how experienced- how much experience you think you have, you’re gonna make a mistake. So how do you handle it?

Manuel Martinez: Right, and in that scenario how did you handle that? Them telling you, hey, your code failed. You could take that very personal and luckily they were- you know, their senior developer knew and was kind of able to fix it. But from an ownership standpoint, What was… if you remember, at that time, what did it feel like to know that, man, I broke something, I caused an outage.

Dennis Moriarity: Oh I thought I was getting fired. I was terrified. It was one of the hardest experiences at such a young age to go through because knowing you’re costing a business millions of dollars is terrifying. And to get that call in the middle of the night and say, hey, why aren’t you monitoring your stuff one. Two… it’s failing. And I was fully prepared to be fired the next day. I really thought that’s what it would come down to. Basically, they don’t do it again. And why- how did that happen? And I went through and sure enough, they said the one scenario that happened, I said, I did not test for that. And they said, okay, well, now you know. So it was a- I owned it extremely… probably to a unhealthy degree because I obsessed over it. And everything after that for a period of time, I probably over tested And I obsessed over testing it through who knows, probably to an unhealthy degree. And that’s how I handled it. It wasn’t the most healthy way to do it, but it’s just what happened

Manuel Martinez: So now at some point, you have been working, like I said, roughly around 10 or 11 years in the finance. And then eventually you decide to kind of transition out of there and you end up in public sector. Or there might’ve been, I think, another couple of roles in between.

Dennis Moriarity: My wife wanted to get out of the cold. We were in upstate New York and she wanted to move somewhere warm. We came to Vegas. When I first got to Vegas, I got a role with Credit One. So I was still in the financial sector just doing credit cards at that time. It was a contract job, six months. When that ended is when I ended up in public sector for the city of North Las Vegas. I went there not wanting to do management anymore. I was management when I left Bank of New York I was management when I went to Credit One. And I said, you know what? I just want to be a programmer. I don’t want the responsibility of managing people. So that’s what I got. I got a programmer job at the city of North Las Vegas. The hard part was when I got there, I saw all the problems and was like, man, I could fix that if I was the manager or director or whatever it was. And I had a conversation with one of the current directors and told them I was interested in potentially pursuing the IT director role. And he mentioned it to the city manager and it all kind of just fell into place. Eventually they opened the role. I applied, I ended up getting it and the rest is history.

Manuel Martinez: So I know that you wanted kind of the individual contributor role, but what is it that drew you into kind of public sector and as opposed to, if I want to be an individual contributor and I have experience in programming, why not private sector? And there could be any number of reasons. Like one, I couldn’t find the role. This one was easier. Like, I’m just curious

Dennis Moriarity: Yeah, it was just what, that’s what was available. I think I did a search and that’s what came up. I didn’t even know there was a city in North Las Vegas, to be honest, when I first moved out here. It just happened that way.

Manuel Martinez: And kind of once you got in and you see, you see all these problems that you want to fix and I’m assuming you kind of got into that leadership role, what were some of the challenges because it’s similar to kind of the finance industry right? You’re talking about- there’s regulations. It’s a slower process. It’s not the same, you know it’s not like for like but it is that. It’s not like when you’re the individual contributor, like doing this stuff yourself. It’s not like working for somebody in private where it’s like, go, go, go, let’s make these changes. Did you feel like it was a pretty easy transition in the public sector and- or did you think like, I can fix these problems, but I’m, I don’t want to say that you are limited in what you can do, but you just realize that similar to your changes, like I’m going to have to plan this and take a little bit longer.

Dennis Moriarity: Public sector moved in slow motion. That was my biggest challenge when I got there is everything was so slow. And I was used to bang, bang, bang, you know, especially at Credit One you know, they were at the time, they were pretty small. So we were making changes kind of regularly. We still had a process, but it wasn’t as long as the banks and it only took a couple of days. But when you get to the city, you know, you’re relying on purchasing and finance and all these other departments to make your change and then you can’t get anyone to test them. And you know, so you’re starting to like, oh man, like, this is nothing like public sector. It’s just different They don’t have as much staff. You know, typically government agencies are understaffed. So when you’re developing something or making a change and you’re relying on that end user to test it, it could delay your project a month or two, even though you’re like, hey, I made my changes. You’re telling your boss, okay, I did this. They’re just not available And you know, typically in that space. They understand that. And that was okay, but that was my biggest challenge. And you know, I always said it was the easiest job I ever had just because of the speed of it. It allowed you to kind of queue up a lot of things because you’re like, well, this is waiting for the users onto the next thing.

Manuel Martinez: And in there, you’re kind of, you’re able to queue. You have to learn some of the skills of like planning because it didn’t, it takes a little bit longer. So you have to plan now even with you planning and you implement it, it’s still like you mentioned, it takes time for someone to go through and test it and kind of vet it all the way through. In that role, I’m guessing you’re no longer hands-on and you had a little bit of a struggle, you know, previously with, you know, trying to delegate , but now you’re also not just in charge of the application like you were previously, infrastructure comes along, there’s probably help desk, there’s all these different entities where, not that you’re not familiar with how they work, but you’re no longer considered more of the expert, like you would be in programming. Again, you can balance ideas, you understand how programming works. You mentioned, hey, I did infrastructure, I realized that’s not what I wanna do. I understand it, but I am not the infrastructure person. So what was it like kind of having to lead those times with teams?

Dennis Moriarity: That was imposter syndrome beyond belief. Stepping into that director role, I was like, what am I doing? They say- I don’t know what I’m doing. And that was the hardest part for me is trusting myself and all that I had been through in my career to know that I did know what I was talking about Even if I didn’t think I did, I did. And I knew how to ask the right questions And I see a lot of your great posts talking about, oh, I built this thing for them, and they didn’t even need it. But you thought they needed it. And stepping into that director role was kind of the same thing as you see all these grand things you wanna do, but no one’s asking for them. But you wanna do it, because you’re like this will help you. But they don’t need it. They don’t want it. you know, taking a step back, and as I look back at my tenure at the city, I see, well, there was a lot of what Dennis wanted to do. Was there a lot of- Did I do a lot of stuff for the users that they actually wanted? And of course I did right? We did our CIP planning, which is our capital plan, and it involved all the user groups and what they wanted. And we did some big projects during that time. But there was also a lot of IT driven projects that Dennis thought they would like, and they might not have, I don’t know. They never told me but Who knows, right? But it was forced upon them because IT rolled it out. City spent a lot of money on it, you’re gonna use it. And that’s why I love reading a lot of your posts on the reflection of, I did this, no one asked for it. Or I thought I was doing something good, but in the end, I just wasted a bunch of time. And I think the imposter syndrome part comes because I start talking to people like a Bob Leek or a Jason Frame or a Rishma, and they’re very knowledgeable They might’ve been in those senior roles a lot longer than I have, and you’re intimidated by them. And they’re all great folks, and they’re all easy to talk to, but you’re still intimidated because you’re the new man to the group. And I would get it with these groups, and at the time, Michael Sherwood was in Las Vegas, and they’d be having these huge discussions. And when I realized I could join those discussions and not be a total idiot, I started getting comfortable in my skin. That was the biggest challenge for me as the director. It wasn’t learning the infrastructure. It wasn’t learning help desk or managing any other people. It was managing myself. That was the hardest part.

Manuel Martinez: We all have been there, right? Where we feel that I’m not as smart as all these other people. Is it… You mentioned that you’re comfortable kind of asking questions Were you- apart from them kind of sharing information were you asking questions? What is it about over time that made you feel more saying like well, I do know more than I think I do or than I realized. I’m gonna say the more that you realized Because the same thing, I’ve gotten into roles and I’m like, oh my gosh, I don’t know how to do this, but then kind of reflecting back, or as you start kind of messing around with it, you start asking other people, and you’re like, oh, okay, oh, well, this is similar to, when I did this in the past, or, oh, that’s not as bad, like, okay, I don’t know it, but I can figure that out, give me like a week or so, and we’ll get there. I know you needed it by Friday, but give me two Fridays and I’ll have it done. So is it just, is it more them just sharing information with you? Did you get more comfortable because you learned to ask more questions? I’m just curious how that came about.

Dennis Moriarity: The tech community in Vegas is amazing at helping each other. So that was a big, comforting fact, but it was also the acceptance to myself of knowing you don’t know everything and you’re not going to know. Doesn’t matter. And I surrounded myself with a great team at the city that were all smarter than me, and I was okay with that, I didn’t mind. And I loved asking questions of them, and that helped me feel more comfortable when I would be sitting with a peer like a Bob Leek or a Jason Frame or Rishma or whoever it was at the time, knowing I knew what was going on with my city and the technologies we were implementing, but I wanted to know more about what are you doing. So it was really easy to go to them and ask them like, hey, we’re about to do this project. Have you guys done anything similar? And what are the products you guys chose, and what were the reasons? And at the time, we reached out to Henderson a lot, and they were always very helpful with producing their documentation on the research they did. We did a big building, planning, and licensing project, which we piggybacked off of Henderson. And they were kind enough to kind of tell us these are all of what not to do with this product. And it was extremely helpful, and that’s why I love the tech community in Vegas is they’re all just so helpful.

Manuel Martinez: So you mentioned that you were comfortable not knowing and asking all these other organizations. Now this is around the time that our paths crossed, and one of the things that I noticed around that time, so I was working for VMware at the time, I was ESE, and I would come in, We had conversations, you, Kendall, and myself, but one of the things that when we would have these meetings it wasn’t just the three of us. You were always bringing in like Ken, who would come in, and there’d be a lot of times where conversations would come up about the VMware environment or this, and you had a general understanding. You knew what was going on, but you would always, at the same time know you would direct, or you would ask Ken, like, hey, is that, does that makes sense is that something what we’re doing? And you, not just your peers, but even the people that you were leading, you seemed to be comfortable in kind of, I don’t know if delegation’s the right word, but just kind of calling on them and saying, you know that information I can ask you, and instead of you being like, okay, well, let me take that information, and then kind of behind closed doors, now I’ll go ask all these people, and then come back and say, okay, here’s what we’re doing, and how we’re gonna approach this, you did it with them in the room, is that something that you had just kind of learned over time, just all these different… experiences, even, you know, working in banking and everything else, how did you get to that point? And I don’t know if it was even a conscious thought, it might not have been, but that is something that I noticed, is that you had those people in the room to be able to answer those questions

Dennis Moriarity: It’s twofold. It took me a long time to understand I’m not the guy in the room. And two, I read a lot of books, I attended a lot of seminars on how to how to be a better leader, and, you know, “Speed of Trust” is one that came to me early on when I was developing in my leadership career, and if you’ve ever read it, it kind of talks about the tax that you put on everything when you don’t trust folks, right? And that tax is time. And so imagine if I sat with you in a meeting, and it was you, Kendall, and me, and you’re an engineer, and you’re telling me all this stuff, and I’m taking all these great notes, and I’m like, okay guys, let’s reconvene in two weeks, I gotta talk to my team. Well, why can’t I just have my team there, and they can ask real time, because I don’t wanna waste your time, I don’t wanna waste Kendall’s time, and I don’t wanna waste my time, more importantly, my time. But I never asked vendors to come to the city to talk to me. I asked them to talk to my team. They’re the SMEs. I, you know, most vendors know my number one thing was, I’m just the pocketbook. That’s all I was. I was the final decision maker on if we were gonna spend the money or not. But my team was gonna tell me if it was gonna help us or not. So I really became trustworthy of my team, and built that trust with them, knowing I wasn’t making decisions in a bubble that were gonna impact them. They were helping me make those decisions real time. Right, they heard everything from the vendor I heard. Typically, the only thing I truly cared about in the end was how long is it gonna take, and what’s it gonna cost me? Because labor is time- labor is cost, and cost is cost right? So when I’m assessing anything, how much of my labor is gonna be eaten up? Because that’s dollars. That’s- and in the public sector, that’s taxpayer dollars. That’s even more important to me, because I’m not trying to waste taxpayer dollars. So I need to make sure I have all the right people involved up front, or else we’re gonna waste a lot of time trying to get to the end result.

Manuel Martinez: And I haven’t read the book “Speed of Trust” so now I’m gonna add that to my list of things. But is that- are you a big reader? So I know a lot of times, we can read, but at some point you have to implement it. So it sounds like, not only did you read the book and say, hey, I should do this, you started to implement. So is that, I know there’s conferences, there’s workshops, all these different things, but do you find that reading… is something that you do a lot to kind of grow your skillset? And I’m assuming it comes from the first book where your dad’s like, here, read this, figure it out. Like, is that a continuous thing throughout your career?

Dennis Moriarity: Yeah, it’s just changed, right? I used to read a lot of programming books. Now it’s all about leadership and kind of self-growth, but I do go through a lot of books. Reading is a very essential part for me to for that continuous growth. I believe when a leader thinks they’re at the top of their growth, well, that’s a problem. We all can learn something new every day and we should all strive to learn something new every day.

Manuel Martinez: I saw a, I don’t remember if I saw it in a, as part of a YouTube video or if I read it, but I think it was through from Ryan Holiday. And one of the things that came up, or like a quote that he had presented was, not all readers lead, but all leaders, hold on, “Not all readers lead, but all leaders read” Did I say that right?

Dennis Moriarity: I don’t know that quote.

Manuel Martinez: Yeah, it was something, and just, I guess the question I’m asking there is, based on your experience being in leadership and just kind of your own experience with some of the people you know, and is that something that some of the better leaders, they’re constantly always reading and trying to self improve, and just because you’re a reader doesn’t mean that you know how to lead, but a lot of times, leaders, they will go through and continue to read because they want to get better. There’s that… that need or that want to say, I want to get better, and the only way to do it is to understand, like you mentioned, that time is one of your big things. Like, you don’t want to waste time. You don’t also have the time to sit there, and I’m gonna ask everybody, you know, 10 different people, I can just, I can read this book that they’ve probably done all the research and they interviewed 100 people, and I can get all that in one book.

Dennis Moriarity: It’s really under reading the book and being able to apply it to you. That’s a skill set in itself. You can read all the books you want, but if you don’t know how to apply it and self-reflect on does that actually apply to me? Do I already do that in maybe just a different way? As we read, especially as you get into reading a lot of books, there’s a lot of conflicting strategies on how to lead or how to do this, I’m a firm believer of just, your position doesn’t make you a leader. And that is, you know, you’re the CEO of your own life, but when you’re in charge of other folks, now you have to be a leader. Are you trying to help them become better in their life? That’s the way I take leadership. I’m not here just to lead the city. I’m here to lead every individual underneath me to a better life So if I have to have that conversation with someone about what do you want to be when you grow up, I don’t care if you’re 50 years old I’m gonna ask you, is this what you really want to do with your life? Have you wanted to get into management? Have you wanted to, you know, you’ve been an individual contributor for 20 years. Do you want to get into management, architecture, or something, or are you okay with it? And some people are, and that’s okay. I don’t have a problem with that. But we also have to understand the human side of your employees. It’s a very important aspect that especially in today’s world of the ever-changing market of in-office versus remote. I can trust my employees that if they’re having a problem at home, I can send them home, and they’re still gonna do their work. Because if they’re sitting at the office, they could be mulling over whatever’s going on at home. And they’re not gonna be productive either, right? So what’s the point of having them in the office and making them suffer? Send them home, be a human. Treat them like a human. You know, and I’ve always kind of led the way my mom told me when I was young is treat people the way you want to be treated, right? If I’m having an issue at home, I want to be able to go home and take care of it. So if my employees are having an issue at home, go home. I’m not even gonna ask you. I don’t even wanna know what the issue is, just go home. And you know what? If it’s happening tomorrow, stay home and just work. If you can’t work, call in sick. But I’m not gonna hold it against you. You know, we hear these horror stories of, oh, my manager told me I called in sick 10 times last year. Okay, that’s like less than one a week or one a month you know? What’s the big deal? We hear a lot about flex time and these companies that offer the unlimited time off, which is a scam. If you actually read about it, people take less time off when they have unlimited time off. So reading these books and really trying to get the human connection, that’s what I care about. I care about the human connection with my employees because if they feel that, or they know that I care about them, they’re gonna produce better for me. And I’m gonna do whatever I can to make sure that they enjoy coming to work. If you gotta spend somewhere eight hours a day I really hope you enjoy going there because I’m taking time away from you and your family. And that’s debatable in a lot of circles, is that the wrong way to approach it? Because now I’m being too nice and I’m not that strict leader, but I’ll still fire you. You know, I mean, it’s business at the end of the day. So for me, leadership is much more than a title. It’s how you treat people. what are you doing to… help those underneath you surpass you, right? Because that’s leaders develop other leaders at the top level. And that’s our end state. I had great, and I know you know some of the people I worked with at the city. Jeremy was my infrastructure manager when I was there. And I had 100% faith in him to do whatever it was infrastructure. And we would have regular conversations about what are we doing to improve the city’s stability? And how are we addressing these capital projects and things? So we would plan it out. And I know he would work closely with Ken. And I had Ronald Williams, my security manager. And I could go on and on about all the folks I had there, Adam Cohen, my architect, and we would discuss because they need to be part of the vision as well. And that’s one of the hardest things that I’ve always had a struggle with is getting everyone on board with my vision. It’s easy because it’s in my head. But getting everyone to buy into that is… a whole other challenge for a leader. And everyone does it differently. Bob is great. Bob Leek at the county is great at getting people to buy into his visions. Everyone has their challenges, that’s mine.

Manuel Martinez: I like the way you said it, right? You can read all these books, but you have to be able to apply it and then also kind of filter out. There’s gonna be contradicting things, but really finding out what works for you and why. Don’t just take everything And it kind of goes back to questioning stuff because a lot of times earlier on in my career, I didn’t question enough in the right way. It’s not just like, hey, do people wanna build this, but also just for management and leading. and leading. Hey, is this the way I wanna do it and why? Do I wanna communicate? And you have to understand, yes, I wanna communicate with everybody, but then there’s a point where you have to kind of be able to understand, I need to make a decision. I have all this input. I can’t keep pulling in information, pulling in information. At some point, you’ve gotta make the decision. You mentioned, are you too nice? Yes, you’ll fire somebody, but I’m sure it’s not just from one day to the next. You’re doing the evaluation. You’re having that communication like, hey, you’re not performing You’re, hey, this is the level of expectation. I understand things are going on, or maybe nothing’s going on, but it’s just, you’re not meeting the standard of what should be, what needs to be taken care of, and hey, I now have gone through the process and I’m sorry, it’s time to go.

Dennis Moriarity: Yeah, and I think a lot of, and this is for anyone aspiring to be a manager or even a leader at some point, a lot of people struggle with having to fire people And you just have to know that if you’ve done everything you can to help that person get up to speed or get to where you need them to be, then you’re not doing, they’re doing themselves a disservice at that point and you kind of have to let it happen And I promoted some new managers that were never managers in their career that wanted to take that leap. And that was their biggest struggle, was dealing with conflict, right? And they have two employees that are arguing and “how do I, you know, how do I?” And I say “You’re the manager.” Who do you think is right? Neither one? Well, let them know. We did a lot of personality tests at the city. I felt it to be fantastic. I forget which one we did, but you get a color associated to yourself. Green, yellow, blue, and red I think, are the four colors. And depending on what color you are is how you would interact with the other color. And we did it as, first we did it as the management team only. It was just the leadership team within IT. And then we did the whole department so that everyone knew how to interact with others. And once we went through it, we started kind of, hey, I bet this person’s this color and I bet this person’s this color And sure enough, it’s really easy to figure out who’s that color. And then it puts things into perspective of, well, when I told them to do this, they didn’t do it. Oh, because I didn’t deliver it in the way that they accept it or understand it. But they were too afraid to maybe ask that manager for clarification. And so it became this really cool dynamic that evolved from doing that personality test for everyone to understand how to interact with each other.

Manuel Martinez: And it’s funny you bring that up because it is, I don’t remember where I kind of heard it or seen it, but a lot of understand that is I can deliver something to you and you can take it a different way. It’s not that you misconstrued what I said, it’s just I didn’t communicate it in a way that you, based on the colors or based on your personality that addresses that some way. Maybe I’m very direct and you take that as, hey, man, he’s being very mean to me. Well, I’m not being mean, it’s just your personality doesn’t like directness. I have to understand that and say, hey, I don’t wanna say sugarcoat it, but just be able to present it to them in a different way that aligns with the way that they are going to receive that information because I can spit it out one way and that doesn’t mean that I’m right or that I’ve given you all the clarity and the direction. It’s at the end of the day, it’s how did that person receive it? How did you receive it? Because I can tell you, hey, I need you to do this, this, and this You get it one way and when it doesn’t happen, there’s that conflict or that misalignment.

Dennis Moriarity: Yeah, that’s a great point is what you’re saying or delivering to someone, they might not be hearing that same message. And I’ve had that happen in my career, right? Where I was leading someone and I thought I was doing a great job at leading them and they were taking it the total opposite way of that I was bashing them and putting them down. And my intention was very positive, but the way they received it was a very negative way. And I’ve had some great mentors, shout out to Scott Magarflash, but he, and I told them because I’m the consummate, I want everyone to be happy and enjoy work. So when I get negative feedback from someone like, hey, you told me this and that really hurt. And I’m like, wait a minute. No, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s something we learn as we’re developing our leadership skills is, oh man, I can’t deliver the same message to four different people the same way. And that’s a great point. I’m glad you brought up the intention versus perception on the other side.

Manuel Martinez: Kind of wrapping up here, but I know that now you mentioned at the very beginning that you’re within Link Technology. So at that transition of continued leadership and you’re within the city and I know that there’s a lot of good things that you did. You mentioned the remote work, because being able to process licenses, like when that shutdown happened, like that was seamless. So you’ve done a lot of great work at the city and I don’t want to kind of diminish all of that, but now in this role, you’ve have all these different experiences you’ve led. You’re helping not only internal, like you mentioned through link, but also kind of helping external people. So now it sounds like it’s more of a consultative role. And what have you been learning in this that from like past experiences or things that you’re learning now in this type of role that says, man, like it’s, these are things that are like I thought they were gonna be, but here’s all these things that I’m like, man, I didn’t expect it to be like this.

Dennis Moriarity: I’ve learned I needed to read all of Manny’s posts multiple times because I know you’ve been through that, right from the VMware engineer and a lot of what you put in there about, hey, I would go to these meetings and I wouldn’t listen or I wouldn’t ask the right questions and I would develop kind of my own sense of what they want and then we deliver it and they’re like, what the heck is this? So, but no, but seriously, I’ve learned to really go through a lot of your posts because a lot of your posts are extremely informative, especially from the, I’ll just say the sales side of things because the reflection of really listening, what are they really trying to tell you? And understanding, sure, I’m still a leader. And I have to be very conscious of what I say because what I say can sometimes be taken as the golden, that’s what it is. And I went through that at the city sometimes too, is I would say something and then everyone would go off run and do that and I’m like, whoa, I just, oh no, what did I do? And sometimes we forget as leaders, the power our words hold. So the number one thing I’ve learned in these client meetings is stay quiet, get as much information as you possibly can. And then once you have a good grasp on what they really want is when either we’ll set up a follow-up or I will respond. But in the end, it goes for any leader, stay quiet because the minute you open your mouth, all of your followers are gonna jump to whatever you just said. So for me to sit in a meeting with a client or even with my team, I try to be as silent as possible. Just learning over the years that, so when I do speak, it’s taken very seriously because Dennis doesn’t like to talk. One, I don’t like meetings and two, we’re there for a reason. So let’s make it productive. Let’s not waste anyone’s time. And let’s make sure we truly understand what the problem is we’re trying to solve.

Manuel Martinez: Yeah, and I won’t take all the credit. And I think in one of the posts I mentioned, like Kendall was a big one is because when I first came in, I was used to similar, like when you talked about being the developer is just, there’s a problem. I know the technology, they can fix it. I’m gonna make these changes because I think that that’s what they’re saying. Again, they’re delivering something, that’s not their intention. The way I’m receiving it is here’s the fix. And he was like, like you said, he’s like, you need to be quiet, you need to listen, and you need to ask questions. Now at the end, like you said, because they’re looking at you and that role, and again, from a leadership standpoint, or even as the engineer is, well, you’re the expert. Now I’m not the expert in everything, but from a VMware standpoint, you mentioned it, I can’t know everything. I can’t be that person, but I can ask all the right questions and make sure like, okay, this is what I think you’re saying. Is this correct instead of building the thing and they don’t use it or they’re like, well, that’s not what we wanted. Thanks a lot for nothing. So, but that is a, it’s interesting to hear that, like from that perspective, it’s just like, I do it to kind of reflect and hey, here’s what I learned. And sometimes you wonder, is this helping people? Is this of any use? So it’s, I appreciate that.

Dennis Moriarity: I love reading your posts, Manny. I mean, I think they’re extremely insightful, especially if you take it from, Know that someone, Manny in this case, has gone through that already. And he’s sharing this information to you, so you don’t have to go through the struggles or maybe the hard conversations with your boss because you said something in a meeting that you shouldn’t have said. And I think it’s all, I mean, your posts have helped me extremely from, especially from the sales side of, client kind of consultative because I’ve always been the client. And I think, and when I speak with Debbie, my CEO, and I tell her, I was the client for 20-ish years. So take that with what it is. I haven’t been a salesperson for 20 years. I’m growing into sales and I think she understands that and has been very helpful when it comes to, this is how we’re gonna talk to the client or this is how we’re gonna, she really is very good at hearing what they want because she’s done it for so long, right? So she doesn’t make the same mistakes I make when I make assumptions on this is what they want and no, this is what they want, okay.

Manuel Martinez: So you’ve been gracious to answer all my questions. Tell me a lot about your different experiences and there’s a ton of information that hopefully, again, people take from this conversation and say, learn from Dennis, learn from both his successes and his failures. And again, failure is more of like a learning thing, right? It’s not like, oh, you failed, you’re terrible. It’s, hey, I didn’t do well in this. I learned from it and I got better. Is there anything that you want to, maybe something we glossed over that you didn’t get a chance to talk about or we didn’t go deep enough or like a reflection? I just, I wanna give you the opportunity to kind of wrap it up any way that you want to.

Dennis Moriarity: You know I really wanna I wanna just revisit the intention versus the receiving end, right? Because we can have all the great intention in the world, but if we’re not delivering it the way that person’s expecting to receive it, or if we’re not circling back with them to make sure that they had, they received it the same way we intended to deliver it. I think it’s a very important message for any person in any role. It doesn’t matter if they’re a coworker or, you know, it’s your boss, because even managing up is a thing, right? So know that anytime you’re delivering a message to someone, it might not be received the way you intended it, no matter in any, you know, it could be your wife, it could be your husband, anybody. So sometimes it’s best to double check.

Manuel Martinez: In that scenario, do you think it’s best to ask questions and just kind of make sure, because one of the things that I’ve learned, especially through these conversations and, you know, having, you know, a lot of the self-reflection is, the question you don’t wanna ask is, “does that make sense?” Because then as harmless as it may seem, some person might can kind of go through and be like, does it make sense? Because I feel like I explained it very well, right? It’s almost like you’re talking down to like, the response should be yes, because if it doesn’t make sense, then I need to explain it to you, but it’s really, how would you say you go about it? Or, you know, what are things that you think somebody might try to make sure that you get that clarification? Is it just asking a question, but not that one? Just like, you know, I guess I’m wondering how you might go about to make sure that the intention and the perception align.

Dennis Moriarity: Yeah, so typically when I’ll set something across, and my intent is always well-meaning, we have to circle back and make sure that when we’re ending that meeting with someone, we are reiterating what we spoke about, and that we’re both on the same page. I’m not gonna ask you, you know, basically, are you okay with that? Or do you understand what I said? I’m gonna regurgitate everything that I processed and see if they got the same out of the conversation, right? So if I’m doing a one-on-one with an employee, and the first thing I’m going to address with them is, here’s some of the challenges ‘re facing. Of course, it’s not gonna come out like that. We’re gonna talk in a different way. And I’m gonna give them the chance to give me a rebuttal, because they might not see it the same way I see it. I see it as a challenge, but they see it as a roadblock. Right “Oh well Dennis, I needed” “your help on that.” Oh, okay, well, I’m glad you let me know. Because if I just attack them, they’re gonna come out, they’re gonna shut down, and it’s gonna be a very hostile kind of one-on-one. But if I can lead them with questions into explaining what they see from their side on the challenges I’m seeing from my side, then I’m giving them the opportunity to deliver it in a way that I’ll understand it, not just delivering from my perspective. Because my perspective is always harsh. I’m a very straight talker. In the world of colors, I’m a red, which means I expect things to get done now, and I’m gonna deliver things very bluntly to you. And I’ve had every other color under me at some point. And I had to learn how to really deliver and give everyone an opportunity to speak to me in the way they speak. And I had to learn how to receive it. So it’s not always about how I deliver to them. It’s about how do I receive from them. So when you understand who, on what personality spectrum someone is, it makes it a lot easier to be able to receive. Because especially in the IT world, you’re dealing with a lot of more introverted folks. They don’t want to be in a, I say this loosely, in a combative conversation. conversation. You have someone that tends to just go with the flow. And that’s not always productive. We want to make sure that when we’re having conversations with employees, they feel comfortable that they can be candid, that there’s no repercussions to that conversation, and that you truly, truly understand what they’re saying. Because if you don’t, they’re not gonna open up to you. And I’ve been a part of conversations where it was either my boss or someone in my chain that would repeat the same thing over. And I’m like, I’ve told you this already. I’ve explained this to you. And I realized I wasn’t communicated in a way that they would receive it. But they weren’t also trying to communicate in a way that I received it. So it doesn’t help to not know your team, especially in a leadership role. You need to know your team and how to communicate with each and every one of those folks. You need to know your wife or your husband, and you need to know how to communicate in that kind of relationship and how they understand it too. So I love helping people grow. I love seeing people grow in their career, take risks that they might not have taken under a different leader or whatever it is. But to me, everyone should always work in public sector, at least once in their life. I think it is a life-changing understanding of how our government works, no matter if it’s local, state, Fed, whatever. Do it, be a public servant. You’ll learn a lot. And you might not hate the government so much. But I also, if I was to leave everyone with just one quote is “Be kind, you never know what someone’s going through.”

Manuel Martinez: I love it. I think that’s a perfect way to kind of end this conversation So again, thank you for taking the time and sharing all your knowledge and your experiences.

Dennis Moriarity: Thank you for the opportunity and thank you for all your wonderful LinkedIn posts. I appreciate it.

Manuel Martinez: Thanks. And for everyone that is watching and listening, again, thank you so much for continuing to support. What we’re trying to do here is again, the intention behind it is to really share all this knowledge and information that not just from my perspective, but from others. So that’s kind of where the interview process comes into play is understanding and learning how to communicate better. So with that, continue to plug in and download the knowledge And until next time, thank you.