Daemon Time with Alex Tushinsky
Today I have a special post for everyone, as I recently had the pleasure of speaking with and asking some great questions of an industry veteran with over thirty years within the technology field, including but not limited to development, infrastructure, and cybersecurity, Alex Tushinsky.
How did Alex get into technology:
From an early age, Alex knew he would be part of technology, which started at the age of 12, in 1982, during a time in which computers were not what we have today, such as the Atari 400 & Commodore 64. During these days, computer magazines such as "Compute!" would have BASIC programming language code included in the articles that could allow an individual to play a simple game.
During these days, Alex had the Atari 400, which he had spent hours mesmerized with inputting and running these simple games; however, during these days, once the computer had been shut off, all data of the game had vanished. During this time, Alex had learned the Basic programming language as a byproduct of these games; this ability led to slightly modifying games from week to week. Proceeding forward, Alex eventually got an IBM-type computer, which would assist in leveling his skills up significantly with DOS, GW-Basic, Pascal, C, C++, C compilers, and the likes of.
Fast forward to Alex’s college, which at this point in time he was quite versed in technology to the point where he was running bulletin boards as well as writing code as a freelancer for customers he worked with prior. This experience had made the college experience quite underwhelming, which led Alex to leave college to continue his self-teachings.
During this in-between time, Alex has continued to dive into technology to evolve his coding skills to the next level day by day. One specific experience Alex recalls is creating a shopping cart, which he found a high interest in.
Alex then found himself picking up traction in his career, starting to work with a college that evolved his UNIX, helpdesk, and support skills, which he had leveraged to speed up his process.
Following this, Alex had a lucky break, landing a temporary assignment with a larger consumer soft drink company, which had evolved into a two-year position, which had only been possible due to a chance he was given by an individual who would move on to be an impactful mentor to Alex .
Proceeding forward with the soft drink company, Alex had created a system that, unfortunately, made his prior role obsolete, leading to his new adventures as a freelancer and landing a role with another company for ten years, moving to an architect position. Which had led to Alex moving and deciding to go back to college, as he found he had fallen behind on some of his skills and technologies while with his prior company.
Alex had enrolled with Western Governors University (WGU) to pursue and obtain a bachelors in software development and a Masters in cybersecurity within four years which leads to where he is today.
Question Time:
Now that we have some background about Alex , let's hear what he had to say about industry questions. Below in bold are some questions I asked, followed by a summarized answer from Alex .
Do you believe that individuals need a degree in this field?
No, you can get fairly far without one. This is shown with the freelance work success he had obtained. Now with a corporate career in management to C-suite, the ability to proceed forward might be quite difficult and hinder some opportunities.
How do you see career and skill stagnation, and how can this be prevented?
From a company perspective, this can be quite difficult, as a slow change to technology is a huge factor, as commonly some outside force or entity's action is a key to changing trajectories. He stated an example was a project he work on written with Microsoft Silverlight had been killed overnight due to HTML5 which had been an acting force moving his company.
From an individual perspective, he stated that working on a project on personal time or potentially moving companies to stay on the edge of technology is ideal; however, no one directly knows what technologies will be impactful and which will fizzle out. Conducting research on your own is always a great idea to see what technologies are coming out and evolving. He also stated to find a niche early on, as the amount of technologies is quite overwhelming.
Within your industry experience, has a new technology impacted your career?
.NET was the large impact on my earlier career; however, moving into cybersecurity within college had given the opportunity to become a C-suite. Alex is also looking to AI as the next career-critical technology he is pursuing.
As a leader how do you find a good balance with keeping up with ever growing technologies as well as managing a team properly?
Alex remembers early on being a manager at an electronics store , which had given a solid foundation: a leader needs to have the ability to complete all roles efficiently. This correlates to a role such as in the C-suite level, as a leader needs to know what technologies and industry practices are currently effective while leaning on the individuals who are directly working on these tasks to get the critical insight.
On the personal side, learning technologies you had an interest in will not only help grow your skills but could also be leveraged in the future if your company picks up a new technology.
From a leadership perspective, how did you handle the impact of the early 2020s mass growth and remote inclusion?
The growth was not a direct impact on his team, luckily.
With regards to remote work at that time, he had fifteen years of direct experience, which allowed this aspect to evolve with ease. However, the time of work had altered as many individuals had more time and flexibility to complete tasks, which in turn could create long or abnormal hours.
Can you recall any critical moment that altered your approach to leadership?
He had had plenty of less-than-ideal leaders within his experience, which had given him examples he knew he would not follow.
One key item he stated was he had a team of professionals, and he will rely on their expertise in their field to help guide the trajectory. These are motivated individuals who are self-directing, who only need a nudge or a roadblock removed at times without being the direct problem solver. This is quite a shift from being the direct problem solver in which he had previously been known.
Three key aspects to being a good leader are:
- Creating a good team.
- Creating an environment where the team knows what needs to be done.
- Having the ability to rely on the team to lead, rather than dictating everything.
From your perspective, do you foresee AI creating a problem we have not anticipated at this moment in time?
Yes, if we give them too much responsibility, this will create many issues. Along with this, the context is quite difficult, as the AI might use outdated information and/or the results of one node may not be on par with another node.
He stated we need to avoid relying on AI, as the errors and risks alone can create a very difficult situation. Along with this, it could create a false sense of skill amongst heavily reliant end users.
He also stated he does not believe it is anywhere close to replacing a human operator and is closer to a unique tool.
What is your opinion on AI being attached to everything today?
He stated it is getting quite old, and most people really are not wanting AI within every app and aspect of their lives.
Do you believe we are giving away too much of our privacy and companies should be more transparent about what they do with the information?
He stated yes, and reading "The Phantom CISO" by Mishaal Khan and speaking with the author had drastically changed his OPSEC.
He brought up ChatGPT alone is a great example of a risk, as the data we ask could be leveraged later if OpenAI ever has a compromise. Along with this, end-user license agreements are so convoluted and leveraged for marketability rather than privacy, which is not good for us but good for companies. However, the public normalization of accepting these creates an abnormality for those who do not blindly accept as well.
If you could start over, would you change anything with your technology pathway?
He stated he would probably not change much as his pathway was quite lucky. He stated that Microsoft creates a very growth-friendly environment for developers and had led to some of his success. The key item when starting out is finding an affordable or free tool and studying popular technologies.
Anyone aspiring to become a C-suite, what advice would you give them?
Alex stated to focus on increasing leadership skills.
- Communication skills: Have the ability to talk to all levels in a company.
- Start to learn key skills by finding good mentors or looking into leadership courses to get a head start on key those aspects
- Have the ability to properly reflect on any mistakes you make and learn from them.
Thank you all for reading. A huge shout out to Alex Tushinsky, who put aside some time to speak with me and allowed me to create this article.
If you want to connect to Alex to follow his journey, below is his LinkedIn profile.
Alexander Tushinsky
Alex also has several YouTube channels that he hopes to start pointing in in the coming weeks:
Lastly, before we close out, I wanted to let everyone know I hope to create Daemon Time into a quarterly post moving forward.