EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT: MIKE ADAMS
Mike is the technical lead for software engineering for the Defense Finance and Accounting (DFAS) Departmental Reporting Team. Entering his 6th year on the team and with Vergence, Mike is a founding member of Vergence’s first federal prime contracting effort. With the respect of the customer and his team, his support of the project is a large part of why our mission with DFAS continues to evolve and expand.
A native son of Indiana, Mike’s love of athletics was focused on hockey growing up. He grew up working construction, leading him to go to Purdue to study Civil Engineering. After a number of years working in the construction industry in Florida, he decided to return to school and went into Computer Information Science from Tampa College, and has been a programmer for 35 years with companies like Travelers Insurance, Information Management Group, and CNO Financial before joining the Vergence team.
Below are highlights from our sit down with Mike to talk about his experience:
What attracted you to programming? Dad was one of the original members of GTE Data Services, and I was exposed to computers and remote connectivity playing Star Trek on Mainframe Cobol in 1967. Started at Purdue for civil engineering, but was exposed to FORTRAN and later went back to get a degree in programming.
How would you describe your team? Our “team” really functions independently, but we’re able to work together to get stuff done.
What would you say is your highlight of your work with DFAS? Getting our systems migrated out of the limited databases to full SQL to really drive efficiency and performance gains for the customer. That was really a team accomplishment. It’s great to see the customer not having to put in those long overnight hours to deliver on the key work.
What has surprised you the most in your job? The ways that our customer has adapted to work around the limitations of their systems to find a way to get their job done. These are accountants writing code because it was the only way they could figure out how to make it work. Being imbedded with the customer rather than reporting to an I.T. department has been a real eye opener.
What is your favorite thing to do as part of your work? Having the ability to think outside the box and offer solutions that a lot of other environments would not allow. I like to build stuff. I come from a construction background, and seeing a finished product is satisfying.
What advice would you give someone new joining the team? Keep an open mind. Don’t be afraid to listen. Don’t be afraid to offer ideas. Definitely don’t be afraid to share information to support the team.
For you, what makes Vergence different? It’s one of the few consulting jobs I’ve had where you don’t feel left on an island. We hear from management regularly, and that makes me feel involved.
Where do you see technology going? I think voice recognition is going to be big. We’ll be using keyboards much less. Of course, programmers will still have to write code, but for the user I see big changes using their voice. You can see the start of it with Siri and Google assistant.
If you could start over, would you do anything differently? I might have started in programming earlier, but I really got started at the beginning of the PC revolution, and I’m not sure how things would have come out programming in a mainframe. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’d change anything.
What’s your passion when you’re not at work? My grandson. I enjoy playing golf with him. I also enjoy cooking.
Anything else you’d like to share with your coworkers? Nah, I’m just an old hippie.
Mike is a valuable member of Vergence, and we encourage you to talk to him to learn more.