Ep. 104, From coder to CTO

Underserved

Andrew Gelina

Society & Culture, Technology

5.0 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2023

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Aaron Harris is featured in Episode #104 of Underserved. As a kid in the woods of Vermont, Aaron still found a way to plug into technology. A classmate at BYU convinced him to switch majors from CS to Accounting for undergrad, then to get a Masters in IS. This unique combination suited him well, landing him at a Big 6 when there were still 6 of them, and later to an accounting software startup called Intacct as it took off. Aaron has led their technology group for over 20 years, and now Intacct is a part of Sage where he oversees all global development. Building a massively multi-tenant system from scratch has taught him a lot of lessons along the way, which he shares in this episode.

Aaron on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-harris-7407b2/

Aaron Harris in Diginomica - https://diginomica.com/are-we-ready-profound-impact-generative-ai-accounting-and-finance-heres-what-lies-ahead

Sage - https://www.sage.com/en-us/home-1-dark/

Ann Winblad - https://www.linkedin.com/in/annwinblad/

Dunkin Donuts ad - Time to make the donuts - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1e4qhHOIQA

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome everyone to episode number 104 of Underserved.
0:04.8	Joining me today is Aaron Harris, Global CTO at Sage Software.
0:09.6	Let's get started.
0:11.3	Welcome to this week's edition of Underserved, the podcast for the rest of the tech industry,
0:18.7	where we focus on stories of tech industry leaders,
0:22.2	their insights, and their lessons learned.
0:25.1	And now, your host, Andrew Jalina.
0:32.4	Aaron, thank you so much for joining us today on underserved.
0:36.0	Thanks so much for having me.
0:37.1	I'm excited to talk to you.
0:38.6	So way back when out in the sticks in Vergenz, Vermont, a young man discovers technology,
0:45.6	what happens next? I imagine it sits a bit like your own story. I think I was 11 or 12 years old.
0:51.6	A friend had a father who bought a Commodore 64. I was at his house. I saw it
0:57.0	in the corner. I got my fingers on the keyboard and I just was hooked from the first moment.
1:02.0	My parents got me my own Atari 800 XL, 64 kilobytes of RAM. For Christmas that year, I had
1:09.0	to be a bit different. I've been coding ever since.
1:11.6	What else are you into besides programming? Are you playing any sports or doing anything else
1:17.0	outside? I'm not sure if this comparison is particularly good for my reputation, but Elon Musk is
1:24.1	about a week younger than I am. And if you read his biography, he basically talks about computers, motorcycles, and social
1:33.5	shenanigans.
1:34.5	And that's kind of the way I grew up in Vermont.
1:36.9	I spent my time by myself writing software on my little computer, riding motorcycles,
	...

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