Ep. 019, Better Business Travel

Underserved

Andrew Gelina

Society & Culture, Technology

5.0 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 April 2020

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Chris Stasonis, VP of Engineering at Lola.com talks about the trajectory of an engineering career, and how to decide at critical junctures - "Stay or leave a company? Stay technical or consider management? How do I become a good (not average) manager?" Chris also (drum roll) keeps chickens and has automated some of the coop life. We talk a bit about the prosumer-ization of flying private airplanes as well.

"Being Geek" - the software developer's career handbook https://www.amazon.com/Being-Geek-Software-Developers-Handbook/dp/0596155409
Author page https://randsinrepose.com/
Reid Hoffman's "The Alliance" https://www.amazon.com/Alliance-Managing-Talent-Networked-Age-ebook/dp/B00JTJ84EW/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1585582216&sr=1-1
The GitHub repo Chris forked for the chicken door robotics https://github.com/ericescobar/Chicken_Door
Guide for aspiring software managers https://www.amazon.com/Managers-Path-Leaders-Navigating-Growth/dp/1491973897
"Infinity pools" book https://www.amazon.com/Make-Time-Focus-Matters-Every/dp/B07DHT9BZV/ref=sr_1_1?crid=FP15NXKU2RCQ&keywords=make+time&qid=1585588299&s=books&sprefix=make+time%2Cstripbooks%2C159&sr=1-1
For hardcore airplane geeks https://foreflight.com/

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this week's edition of Under Serve, the podcast for the rest of the tech industry.
0:12.0	I'm your host Andrew
0:13.3	Jelina. With me in studio today I have Chris Desonis,
0:16.9	VP of engineering from Lola. Chris, welcome to the show.
0:20.1	Thanks for having me. What was your kind of origin story? How did you initially get interested in technology?
0:25.0	Interesting enough, company-wide meeting the other day we had a question for the entire executive team.
0:29.0	What did you want to be when you grew up?
0:31.0	I think it was the only person that got to say, I did it. I've wanted to write software since before I knew it was software.
0:35.6	Grew up in the 80s. For the minute I got my first Nintendo, the original NES,
0:39.3	thought, wow these games are really cool, I want to make these. I didn't know what that meant at the time.
0:43.2	And I lucked out in the fact that my father, while not a software engineer,
0:46.0	really worked around the tech industry kind of in a different segment. So I had really early access to
0:50.4	computer. Kids in the 80s didn't really get this. Commodore 64 got to do my first programming on that. I had early access to like 286 is
0:57.0	through by teenage years was connecting to BBS's building my own computers from
1:01.4	very early on. Started putting the other websites from the minute I had AOL access
1:05.9	before the internet was super ubiquitous.
1:07.6	Do you still have an AOL.com email?
1:09.6	I do not.
1:17.8	The mark of shame in the 90s. Yeah, but it's a mark of tenure I think so. Yes. Now that you're at Lola Travel for those folks who aren't familiar can you tell
1:22.2	us a bit about the company and what you're doing there?
1:24.3	Yeah, so Lila travel has been around for a couple of years.
1:27.2	We're really in a business of making business travel software.
	...

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