E111 - Darien Hirotsu at TachTech

In today’s episode, our USA Principal Consultant, Harry Stephenson, was joined by Darien Hirotsu, the Director of Services at TachTech. They discuss everything from the hottest tech to the most important things to consider if you’re just starting out in the tech space. Darien reflects on his career and tells us what he would’ve done differently given the chance. One of the things is getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Darien starts by telling us where it all started, at a large defence contractor. This job was a pivotal moment in his career as it gave him a lot of great exposure to the industry. During his time there he produced IT systems, and missile satellites, exposing himself to how different systems of different complexities got engineered. From there he worked his way up the industry into Network Engineering roles and ultimately landed his job at TachTech back in 2019 starting as a Senior Consulting Engineer. He worked in that position for just over a year before moving into his current role as the Director of Services.

TachTech has been recognized as one of the fastest-growing private companies in the US for four years in a row. TachTech has fuelled its growth by delivering industry-leading information technology consulting services that secure data, optimize operations, and help clients develop hybrid and cloud-native global IT programs that scale at a record pace. Part of his focus at TachTech as the Director of Services is on secure DevOps and as a collective, they are attempting to get an Ansible model accepted by the AWS collection.

“Get comfortable with being uncomfortable” …

If there’s advice you need if you’re just starting, then take this… get comfortable with being uncomfortable. If you’re uncomfortable it’s your brain telling you that you are advancing yourself and causing you to grow as a person. When Darien looks back on his career, it comes down to issues being preventable but not feeling comfortable enough to talk about them or speak up. Issues could’ve been preventable if he had been more proactive. It’s okay to talk about things that have gone wrong.

“It’s not about how you start; it’s how you finish” …

If you talk to team leaders, their ultimate goal is to just get things done. Just because you start something well, that’s not indicative of getting things done if you’re not finishing it well.

“Learn to treat your career as a marathon rather than a series of sprints” …

You have got to plan your time out well. Get yourself into a consistent style of continuous learning, it’ll serve you well.

Take it from Darien who has had these life experiences. Listen to more great advice as well as a great quick-fire round by tuning in now.