From Degree Free Research Scientist to an 8-Figure Exit w/ Joe Kowalski (DF#159)

Joe Kowalski [00:00:00]:
And so again, it's about bringing value. Right? But how did I do it? I picked up skills on the sun, sacrificing my leisure, my nights and weekends to learn the skills required to do what I wanted to do.

Hannah Maruyama [00:00:20]:
The degree free podcast, everybody. I have Joe Kowalski with me today. I am stoked to have him on the podcast, honored and excited to share his amazing story. He is a fountain of wisdom. He built and scaled and then exited, had an 8 figure exit from one of the first software as a service companies. And so I'm so excited to have him here to be able to share his expertise, his wisdom, but also his really unique and nuanced views on the current job market. And we're gonna talk about AI. We're gonna talk about job market possibilities for software developers and what the future looks like.

Hannah Maruyama [00:00:57]:
And we're gonna get a little bit into Joe's backstory about how he self taught, how he came up through the ranks and ended up building his own company later in life. Super excited to have you on the podcast, Joe.

Joe Kowalski [00:01:10]:
Well, thank you so much for inviting me. I do enjoy sharing my story. I have spoken in front of classrooms before, especially those of underprivileged youth Because our society is real good about telling us, if you don't go to college, you're gonna be a loser. That you're gonna be stuck in blue collar jobs or handing people bag fries. And I graduated in 93, so that was definitely the prevailing wisdom at the time. If you didn't go to college, you were just pretty much gonna never really succeed. And that's been an interesting journey for me. D l d r real quick would be I'm dyslexic.

Joe Kowalski [00:01:48]:
I didn't do super good in high school. I graduated 3.25 GPA, and I gave up my scholarships after a football injury. I was kind of a baseball guy. And even then starting off in the factory, I ended up running 4 different STEM careers, ended up in the lab as an R and D biomedical polymer chemist, did some audio engineering, process engineering before I found my love for software development, worked for Fortune 500 Companies. And like you said, started one of the very first SaaS companies in 2003 at 28 years old. Ran that for 20 years and sold last August for 8 figures. And now I'm doing angel investing, helping other SaaS startups with my experience, providing a little capital, and helping them accelerate their growth. So that's just the high level, and we'll go over that career.

Joe Kowalski [00:02:45]:
But I do wanna address a couple of the common comments that I see in your social media posts because there's a few themes that I think we are worthy of talking about. If we were to kind of focus on kind of 3 main points, the first one that I see over and over again is I'm a polymath. In 93, that wasn't a really well known term. It stuck to philosophers, mathematicians in that collegiate environment. Someone who obtains a large number of seemingly unrelated skills and using them to solve very complex problems. So my number one skill I just happened to be born with is skills acquisition. And I consider myself a scientist first, then as a student of philosophy, then as a technologist, and only then as an entrepreneur. So when I see in the comments people like myself being disappointed and disgusted at the rise of anti intellectualism, willful ignorance, science denial.

Joe Kowalski [00:03:54]:
I understand where they're coming from. You know, far too many people are denying science, the fact that the earth is freaking round, or that people don't believe we landed on the moon, or believe that evolution is a fact, positive aspect of our society. And I find it super ironic that they argue those points using devices requiring general relativity and quantum mechanics, communicating with satellites, orbiting the planet, transmitting data via light. So when I hear comments about the fact that we need college in order to help people out of this celebration of anti intellectualism. I understand where they're coming from. But I also know, and it will be a big theme of our conversation today, that's not the only way to get knowledge. Institutionalized formal higher education is actually an opportunity cost. It takes longer to get the skills you need, and it costs far more both in time and cash.

Joe Kowalski [00:05:00]:
5, 6 years to get a degree, a 100,000 plus dollars in debt. And I firmly believe that if we move that back a bit, that if we talk every 5th through 12th grader, science, philosophy, and critical thinking as a pillar of their education, we would change the world in 20 years. So those two things combined, like, I'm a homeschool parent. I have 6 kids. And my job as an homeschool dad is to install intellectual curiosity, fortitude, and empathy. And I find it ironic that when you hear that college indoctrinates the children, it grooms the children when it's exactly the opposite. It's true. Children are indoctrinated into their culture and their faith when they're kids.

Joe Kowalski [00:05:54]:
And then only when they go, typically college, and they're exposed to critical thinking and formal thought that they understand that their elders actually have no evidence for their claims. And those claims are often used to support things like bigotry and oppression, and it's just silly to me. I understand the comment that we need education in order to combat these kind of harmful things within our society. And I agree, education is paramount, but it doesn't stop in the classroom. And it certainly shouldn't start in the classroom. So that's one big point that I do like to address.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:36]:
If I can interrupt you, I wanna clarify a point before we get too far because I think this is really huge, especially for the audience. And this is one of the big reasons why I was so excited to have you on, Jo, was because one of the things and you know, you saw this in the comments. You see what people will tell you. You can't be a scientist. They will tell you. You will have 3rd year sociology majors with $80,000 of student debt, no future employable skills telling you somebody who is a poly somebody who is an r and d, polymer chemist and a process engineer. You can't be a scientist. You don't have access to that level of thinking.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:13]:
You don't have access to that level of information. You don't have access to those types of jobs because you can't learn those skills. And what I really want to get to is how would you address that when people say that to you? Because I would like the audience to hear your answer to this.

Joe Kowalski [00:07:30]:
Yeah. And I think as we go down my career, I can give very specific examples and guidance providing value, obtaining skill set, looking at the world not as a single career trajectory, but rather as accumulation of skills and giving yourself permission to move from one to the other. And I think that will become more apparent as I kinda go through my history. And I can see in some regard, people can say, well, survivor bias. Just because you, Joe, became a r and d biomedical palmerchemist, Maybe you got lucky. Maybe you happen to be born right. Maybe you happen to have the right opportunity, but that's not always available. And sure, survivor bias is a thing, but I had 4 separate STEM careers.

Joe Kowalski [00:08:21]:
I didn't get lucky 4 times.

Hannah Maruyama [00:08:23]:
At certain point, it's a pattern.

Joe Kowalski [00:08:25]:
That's right. I think at that point, it's a pattern. It's not luck. The other thing I'd like to address in the comments is this idea that everybody can be autodidactic, that people need some sort of structure and discipline.

Hannah Maruyama [00:08:40]:
I fundamentally disagree with that. See it a lot. I'd see it's a benefit, but I fundamentally disagree with that. Human beings are designed to be autodidacts. The way that we teach people now is opposite to the way we naturally learn. I completely fully 100% disagree with that.

Joe Kowalski [00:08:56]:
I totally agree. We snuff the intellectual curiosity. And again, I hate to harp on religion, but that's a place where you're not allowed to question things, where you're not allowed to pursue evidence and look at the data. We kill that scientific curiosity in children, and I see it all the time, even with the most well intentioned parents.

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:19]:
That's something that I see. It's approaching the level too. It's so interesting to see it on college campuses, especially, but I see a level of dogmatism on college campuses that I think is very similar, very akin to a cult or very akin to, like, hard line religious teachings where there is no if, and, or, but. There is no, but why. There is no questioning. And it's that largely is my problem. That is that is one of my biggest issues with it.

Joe Kowalski [00:09:42]:
And I think it's so ironic to see people who argue in the comments with such anger about going to school to combat anti intellectualism and adopt critical thinking and refusing to argue in an intellectually honest way. Don't make personal attacks. It's absolutely ridiculous. So, yes, I find that not only amusing, but quite ironic. I kinda see there's 2 archetypes of people who argue this in your comments. The first one is being the people who have proven to themselves that the culture of college is right. But maybe they went to school, they did pretty good. They went to college, they graduated with a degree in debt.

Joe Kowalski [00:10:27]:
Then they got a career, and they're on their single trajectory path for the next 45 years. And they're so angry at the fact that people can do it without going on that path. Again, they're just dogmatic about it. The other archetype I see could overlap with the first, their parents, who wanna create the best possible chance for their child's success. And I totally get where you're coming from there. But, again, with the dogma and the indoctrination from the people who take the necessary right to their college as part of their financial backing or their financial reward system. And so people force their children to do these things many times against their will. They're forcing their kids into college, and that's not always the best path to success.

Joe Kowalski [00:11:21]:
There are plenty of unsuccessful and miserable college graduates. And finding what you're passionate about and moving through that purposefully, creating value, not just wondering, but going through a career knowing that you don't have to stick to something for 45 years. I think that's a very freeing aspect.

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:42]:
You're just giving the idea. So when you talk about that single trajectory, I think this is important because you've experienced this and your experience has been unique. I think you know what I'm about to ask you. But what I would love to know is how many different career changes do you think people coming into the job market now? So the 16 to 20 year old age range, how many career changes do you think that they will experience? And I mean complete career shifts in their life due to the speed of technology and the changing of the needed skill sets due to that increase of the speed of technology.

Joe Kowalski [00:12:15]:
This is exactly the point I wanted to make. When I graduated school in 93, you were dead set on choosing your whole freaking life of 18 years old and then sticking to that forever. And you look at polymaths throughout history, and that's just not what we do. We're about the skill acquisition and then whatever drives our curiosity. And I think I see with younger millennials and Gen z, they're already accustomed to using the Internet, YouTube, Chat GPT to acquire the skills they need to do the things they wanna do. And I firmly believe in the next 20 or 30 years, we're gonna see a whole population of polymaths. People who are very well versed in many different expert topics and becoming subject matter experts in more than one field and deciding to change careers when it best suits them. So I think that that's much more available now than it's ever been throughout human history because of our access to knowledge.

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:19]:
You know, I agree. This brings up so many things. I have been looking forward to this. I've been looking forward to talking with you all week. And one of the biggest things that I get asked often by parents is they're really concerned and and it's kind of in the same vein of the changing market and the changing way that we learn skills. And one of the things parents are most concerned about right now is what do their kids do about AI? And this is one of the things that I would say is almost an unproductive worry because one, nobody knows. And then 2, I I think that a lot of people that are afraid of AI, they maybe don't understand it or haven't been exposed to it. And so they think that AI is perhaps sentient and it's just just gonna come in and all of a sudden going to be taking all of their jobs.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:00]:
And I don't think they know, 1, how much direction AI takes and then, 2, how much correction AI requires. And so I would love to hear a little bit, especially your experience. And I just saw you talking about this on TikTok recently, but you were talking about the demand for developer jobs. And people think AI is just gonna ruin all the developer jobs. There's gonna be no more need for developers. I'd like you to leverage your expertise and tell us what parents should actually be worried about, where they should be directing their kids to focus their learning energy, and the outlook of the software developer job market.

Joe Kowalski [00:14:32]:
So let's go backwards for a second. Artificial general intelligence, which is the stated goal of OpenAI. That's a singularity, a point within human history where everything will change. When that happens, there are no jobs that are safe. Our economy will completely change. Humanity and how we approach things will completely change. I understand the worry because we don't know what that post AGI world will look like. But the only thing LLMs do is predict the next token.

Joe Kowalski [00:15:10]:
There is no logic or reason. AGI is not happening anytime soon. And I know that people chat with GPT for 10 minutes and go, oh gosh. Look at this thing that feels like I'm talking to a human. And and it's not unless you understand the core technology of machine learning, of large language models, of neural networks, and how the linear algebra works to make bias to predict that next token. Do you actually understand that when Google came out with their paper in 2017 on transformers, That was just another layer of what's gonna be a very multilayered cake to get us there. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, who ran Y Combinator for 5 years. He knows what he's doing.

Joe Kowalski [00:16:06]:
In that, he's using the hype cycle to move cash from one pocket to another. Now I wouldn't put him against, let's say, the bubble burst in 2,000, which transferred $3,000,000,000,000 of value out of the Nasdaq and collapsed the economy for a minute. He's not doing that to be nefarious. He, specifically, is trying to get the funding for the r and d required to take us on this multi decade journey, which might result in AGI. It's like the argument of free will. If you're a philosopher of any kind, a scientist. Like, there's many a neurologist. There's many disciplines that go, maybe we really don't have free will.

Joe Kowalski [00:16:58]:
We just have to operate like we do because we have no other option. In this world of pre AGI, we have to operate like there's no AGI because there isn't, and there won't be anytime soon. The current technology, text generative tech, that's a tool. I used to program websites in notepad, then InterDev came along, then Visual Studio. Now we have a handful of tools that make it easier. These are tools that developers use. There's not a developer in the world that doesn't come to stack trace to figure out how to write a function. And now Chatubit and Cloud, they're giving us these shortcuts instead of using stack trace.

Joe Kowalski [00:17:46]:
Now we can ask them to come up with a sample. Now the code that it's generated It's a mean of all the bullshit that's on the Internet.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:55]:
Devs, if you talk to a software developer and they say a lot of them, you've all been tempted to do this. I'm not a dev, but I have worked closely and know a lot of devs. And they always say the the first thing that devs did was they go, how can I get this to do my job for me? But they can't. All they have to do is fix all the broken mistakes. So in fact, what it kinda reminds me of is people being worried that the invention of the a car is gonna take jobs away from mechanics who work on, steam engines when in fact, now there's just gonna be a lot more jobs, but they're going to shift. Because the I think if anything, it's probably gonna cause there to be more demand for software developers because it's gonna be more common for people to use them. Because there's going to be more work that's done using software developers because now people can get to the point where they have something that's kinda working, but then they get out of their depths really quick. And that would be somebody like me where I get out of my depth and now I gotta hire a professional because I'm not a dev.

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:46]:
And so I actually think the opposite is true. That is what I believe is going to occur in the next decade.

Joe Kowalski [00:18:52]:
Well, it's not just development, writing. It's marketing. It's sales. It's support. It's QA. It's development. I mean, in 1850, 80% of the population was working in agriculture. In 1915, the horse industry and everything that supported it was freaking huge.

Joe Kowalski [00:19:12]:
And that was killed overnight with the model t. Like, we keep evolving because we get better tools, better specialization. Same thing with true with anything that AGI might touch in the future. But right now, it's simply another way to access knowledge.

Hannah Maruyama [00:19:31]:
I have a question, Joe. I wanna kinda go back a little bit into your story and not back into your manufacturing and not back into your r and d, but I'd like to go back to when you start to learn to code. What was your original stack?

Joe Kowalski [00:19:42]:
I started with VBA in Excel. Actually, it might be beneficial for me to run through my story because of the the chronological orders, what makes the most sense. So we can skip anything in high school. Right? I was a musician and artist, baseball, football. Got an injury, so couldn't do the scholarship thing. And I come from lower middle class, so my parents weren't gonna be able to pay for college. We skip all that. My entry point into this story is really me being 21, working in a factory, grinding on aluminum parts for minimum wage with a new wife and a new baby on the way.

Joe Kowalski [00:20:22]:
That's how my story opens. And I think a lot of people can relate to that. Right? It's the loser didn't graduate from college, working in the factory, starting a young family. I am also lazy. So when they dropped off this monstrous amount of parts that we had to deburr, take the sharp edges off of, These specific parts took forever to clean up. And I was like, this. I am not gonna spend 20 minutes apart for the next 3 weeks. And so I spent a little bit of time walking around the shop, trying to figure out a better way to approach the problem.

Joe Kowalski [00:21:06]:
And the next day, I blew through an entire box and caught the attention of c suite. The CEO himself came down to look at what I was doing and how fast I was doing it. And this is one major first point that I like to bring to your audience, bringing value. You know, we look at our world and I see a lot of people who are negative on the capitalist nature of our society. And I get it. I've read Marx. I understand socialism as it claims to be, not what people who hate it want it to be. I'm all for creating companies where the employees own their own means of production.

Joe Kowalski [00:21:50]:
But that still doesn't mean you can't or don't have to bring value to the organization beyond what you're getting paid. You gotta keep the lights on. You gotta hire more people. And then some of that profit gets distributed. But people think they're pigeonholed, that they're just doing the job when they should be looking for ways to increase their value, maybe through more sales or making a better product or making what they're doing more efficient by reinventing the process. This is what I did. And within a short period of time, I was given a significant raise and placed as a manager of a warehouse, where I then did through process engineering, made the process better, brought more value, which continued to elevate my value within that company. So that's the first lesson.

Joe Kowalski [00:22:50]:
Bring value no matter where you're at. Look for ways to bring value. My wife and I then after the birth of our second child, we wanted to move back closer to home, back from Seattle, back to California. When I did that, I was a warehouse manager. So I became the warehouse manager, biomedical polymer plant. I made plastics that went inside the human body. And I helped them with the GMP and ISO processes to standardize material flow and material tracking. And I realized pretty quickly that at 22, 23, I was at the top of my career.

Joe Kowalski [00:23:30]:
Without a so called degree, I wasn't gonna make much more money. And I was at that point, and it wasn't enough to do the things I wanted to do. And so I took a risk. I went to the floor manufacturer within the chemical plant and said, hey. Can I come and help out? Can I scrub pots and clean out the reactors and scrub the plastic off crap? And he saw what I had done with the warehouse and said, yeah. I think I could use you. And so I got my foot on the manufacturing floor by offering some of the crap that they didn't wanna do as chemists who were bachelor's and master's degrees. At one point, one of the people who was in charge with the signature product quit, Like, just threw up his hands and walked off the job.

Joe Kowalski [00:24:25]:
And this was a master's degree. The manager of the floor couldn't spend the weekend to create the product that was due for the big shipment the next week. But he knew that on my own time, I have been studying organic chemistry and polymer chemistry. And he said, Joe, do you think you can make this batch? I said, yeah. Absolutely. I knew I had Glenn's notebook. I knew the process because I've been paying attention. He also knew that the owner had a big chip on his shoulder about degreed people because he himself only had a bachelor's degree and was running against other business owners with PhDs and always felt bad about that.

Joe Kowalski [00:25:14]:
So on Monday, when Donovan submitted the QA sample, the quality assurance, he did it under his name, not mine. And the next day, when QA said, holy shit. Shit. This is the best batch we've made since the owner made it. Donovan, nice guy, said, surprise. Joe made this batch, not me. And that got me into the floor chemical manufacturer. And so, again, it's about bringing value.

Joe Kowalski [00:25:46]:
But how did I do it? I picked up skills on the sun, sacrificing my leisure, my nights and weekends to learn the skills required to do what I wanted to do.

Speaker C [00:25:59]:
Hey there. I hope you're enjoying our conversation and getting a lot of value out of it. Here's a little behind the scenes. We don't pay our guests to join us. They come on purely to share their stories and experiences in the hopes that you can learn from their mistakes and take some lessons away so that you can change your life. The more our podcast reaches people just like you, the more brilliant degree free people we can have on as guests to come and share their stories. So if today's conversation resonated with you or you've listened to multiple episodes, please take a moment and share this episode with a friend. Just a simple click on that share button or a shout out on your stories will make a world of difference.

Speaker C [00:26:36]:
More shares means more listeners, and more listeners means more amazing guests for you. If you could do that right now, you would play a huge role in keeping this chain of knowledge going. Thank you for being a huge part of degree free.

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:49]:
I have a few things I wanna get into about this. Some of the people who listen to this podcast are people who have already bought degrees, and they're now struggling to figure out how to get where they want to go. And one of the things that I find they really struggle with is that mindset of going back to the beginner's mindset and being humble enough or willing enough or just I don't wanna say low enough but kind of a scrappy enough to go back and say, I will do whatever I have to do because they've got so much sunk cost. They feel like they're further ahead than they actually aren't. I'm thinking of specific friends and family when I talk about this too. So they're unwilling to go back to a beginner's mindset to learn because they feel like they've earned their way out of it when in fact they've never been in it. And so how would you say that someone could practice putting on that mindset of being willing to do what they need to do? That's a skill in and of itself and I'm willing to bet as you continue your story, we're going to see that reappear. So how do you recommend people practice that if they've never done it before? Because it can hurt the ego.

Joe Kowalski [00:27:45]:
Yeah. So 2 things there. Number 1 is perspective. Understanding that you don't have to be where you are. You have to start with where you are. You can't start somewhere else if you're not there already. So you always have to start with where you are. But the second point is where do you want to be in 5 years, in 10 years? Are you willing to make the sacrifices now in order to get where you wanna be on a long enough timeline? Too many people are shortsighted.

Joe Kowalski [00:28:18]:
They're worried about the next paycheck and not focused on what their life could be like in 5 years from now, 10 years from now. Hell, 20 years is how long it took me to build ServiceMaster. And here I am, effectively retired at 49, gone through multiple careers. And having a bank account, not to pat myself on the back, but recognizing having too much money is an actual problem. Trying to figure out the hell am I supposed to do with this? How can I leverage it for the next thing? So that perspective, that long term perspective is super important.

Hannah Maruyama [00:28:59]:
So the next question I have is because you talked about studying organic chemistry. I think I know how you did that, but I'd like to hear because I think people need to understand this. This is key. This is probably one of the most important takeaways I want people to hear from this because this is the pushback you get and this is people think that there are all these barriers because of the college marketing machine. Joe Kowalski, r and d, biomedical, polychemist. How did you teach yourself organic chemistry?

Joe Kowalski [00:29:27]:
I read a book.

Hannah Maruyama [00:29:29]:
Where did you get that book?

Joe Kowalski [00:29:30]:
It was laying around the chemical manufacturing floor.

Hannah Maruyama [00:29:34]:
So you just read your book.

Joe Kowalski [00:29:35]:
And I said, hey, Glenn. Can I borrow this book? He was like, that was my college book. And I said, yeah. Can I borrow this?

Hannah Maruyama [00:29:43]:
You've seen it in the comments all the time probably where people will say, well, how can I do that? And I'll say, read a book. And I'm not kidding. I'm not being facetious. I'm telling people that because that's what they do on college campuses theoretically is tell you which books to read. If you are trying to learn something, just go pick up a book on that subject and then read it and then study it as if you were in college because it's the same action without the price tag. The result is also the same, Especially if you have a why, do you think it was more effective because you could see the applied need for it in front of you?

Joe Kowalski [00:30:19]:
For sure. That's another thing that we'll point on especially in software development. I talk about this with new startup founders all the time. If you wanna learn how to code, reading a book isn't the best way to go about it. Using a book as a supplement to solve a problem and identify and tackle a problem, build something you wanna build, and then just start working the problem. Alright. So you you had mentioned that I was in the lab as an r and d biomedical polymer chemist working side by side with dual PhDs. How did I get from the floor of a general manufacturing plant to the r and d lab? It's because I didn't go to college.

Joe Kowalski [00:31:00]:
Here's how that happened. I walked into work one day, and I got called into the director of r and d's office. And I thought I was in trouble. We had to take very, very detailed notes about everything we did. Because if you put something in someone's body and they died from it, you've gotta be able to trace that material all the way back from the entire large supply chain to where it came out of the ground. He had all of my lab notebooks on his desk opened up to various pages, and I thought I was in deep shit. His name was Yan Tian. He was a dual PhD in biochem and polymer chem.

Joe Kowalski [00:31:45]:
And he said, where did you learn this? And he waved his hand across the desk. And I said, I read a book. I paid attention. I'm not sure what you're asking. Did I do something wrong? And he goes, no. Where did you learn how to do this? And he pointed at my data graphs and charts that I had made. And I said, I wanted to look at the data in a way that made sense to me so that I can improve the process. Did I do something wrong? He said, no.

Joe Kowalski [00:32:19]:
We don't do this. And I said, what do you mean you don't do this? Because we don't teach this. We don't teach it in school. We don't do it in the lab. This is very important. We need to do this. You need to come work with me in the lab. And I said, well, Bob's not gonna like that.

Joe Kowalski [00:32:37]:
He goes, let me deal with Bob. And the next week, I was promoted into the lab as a full fledged. I got my lab coat and everything showing dual PhDs how to look at data a new way.

Hannah Maruyama [00:32:54]:
Wow. And it's just necessity and necessity and practicality because we went, okay. I have these scattered. And this is something important for parents listening to whose kids are about to go into, especially technical jobs, but in honestly any job at this point because everything is so data driven. But if your children can understand how to 1 gather data, 2 structure data, and then 3 visualize that data, The key is a visualization because that shows 1, their command, 2, their understanding, and 3, their ability to communicate that to somebody who does not have that skill set. And if they do, they will conquer the world.

Joe Kowalski [00:33:26]:
100%. Yep. Yeah. And so I worked in the lab for about 5 or 6 months. And, of course, they gave me big fanfare. They had a big lunch, and I was the pet of the lab because I was doing the work that took everyone else 8 to 10 years to get in the lab. And I walked in the lab in 10 months. And so I was the piano playing dog.

Joe Kowalski [00:33:53]:
Right? Jesus, look at this genius kid who can do these things. But I'll say that I also got the looks when I left the lab, and here's how that happened. So I'm in the lab. I'm working on a material called Acroflex, which was supposed to be a disc replacement for the discs in between your spinal cord. The QA process took 3 days. So I would take her around. I'd create some material. I'd send it to QA, and they'd run a bunch of tests on it.

Joe Kowalski [00:34:30]:
And you're trying to get your product to match the matrix of all these different tests. Well, being a process engineer and being someone who likes iterative cycles, because this is how you improve, doing it over and over and learning from the previous iteration. I said, guys, you gotta show me what the hell you're doing in this lab. Why is it taking 3 freaking days? So he showed me. So I went off, and I learned how to program to reduce that process from 3 days to 6 hours. Again, providing value to the company. They ended up firing half of the interns out of Berkeley because they didn't need them anymore. I learned how to program solving this problem through VBA or Visual Basic app through applications.

Joe Kowalski [00:35:24]:
Essentially programming Excel to extract the data from these machines and run all the calculations and create the report required. And through this process is where I fell in love with software engineering because the iterative cycles there are instantaneous. You put down your code, you hit go, and you immediately find your problem that you can iterate on the next cycle. And so I said, hi. My lab guys, I'm gonna go work for a Fortune 500 company doing software engineering. Their mind was blown. It's like, you can't do that. I spent 8 years trying to get in the lab.

Joe Kowalski [00:36:08]:
You got in the lab now you're leaving in 8 months. And I said, yeah. I think I like this other thing better. And so, yeah, started over.

Hannah Maruyama [00:36:17]:
This is such a good example of how your skills led you to what really fits you because you were able to have that freedom. Those guys that you're mentioning in the lab were chained to the lab because of that sunk cost. Because they didn't have that freedom and they didn't now wait. You can just keep learning and keep going and keep going further in or you change directions because you can follow where your learning goes. And that's why to just the the idea that college's education is such a problem because that's education. What you're describing is continuous education, and you are you had the freedom to follow it where it led you. And that is just so amazing, and it's such a good story. So inspiring.

Joe Kowalski [00:37:01]:
I started looking for a job, and this was in 99. What I realized is that there was a deficit between how many engineers were being graduated or being put into the jobs and the number of jobs. And that exists today speaking to your point about the fear of AI. We graduate or put into the system about 80,000 engineers a year, but we need a 150,000 a year. And there's still this deficit. And there's this idea because big tech makes big layoffs and that no one can find a job while people who are laid off are looking for a job. There's a momentary point in time where it might be difficult to find a job, but that's because of the toxic hiring practices that are often caused by big tech because everybody's looking for awesome teams. And in order to build an awesome team, one way to do it is hire a shitload of people, figure out who's the top 10% is, and fire the bottom 25%.

Joe Kowalski [00:38:15]:
And they look for excuses to do this, whether it's a downturn in the quarter, a fear of AI, or by whatever reason they they could have to justify those layoffs. There's always a deficit for software engineers. So I started working for a Fortune 500 as a junior programmer writing code and learning how to do that on someone else's time. Like, I learned the basics. But as I was doing it, I kept learning on my own time. Nights and weekends, I'm still programming my own projects, right, to get better at the skill set. And then within 8 or 10 months, I was put in charge of a product that went on to make $6,000,000 a year for the company that I made it. Again, bringing value, learning on your own, finding ways to improve design products.

Hannah Maruyama [00:39:17]:
I'm gonna pull on your wisdom here again, but there's gonna be a ton of people listening, especially thinking about their kids, their 16 to 20 year olds who are interested in going into these technical fields right now. And I I just wanna restate this to make sure people heard it. What Joe said is that there are 80,000 software developers that graduate every year, but we need a 150,000. So what he's explaining is that there is still a massive deficit in the market despite all their big boy tech companies. There's a lot of tech that people don't really think about, they don't see, and they don't understand. But it's there. Okay. So given your experience going into the Fortune 500 after you had gone through all of your manufacturing, through all of your lab work, through all of your r and d, and then your process engineering experience.

Hannah Maruyama [00:40:01]:
So you started as a junior programmer. For those wanting to get into the tech industry now, and you see it. You see that in the context. Oh, well, you can't get into any STEM field, which is just patently ridiculous. It's just so ridiculous I cannot. And I see it all the time. And one of the things that I think and unfortunately is going to hit a lot of the comp sci because the people who usually feel that most vehemently or say it are gonna be comp sci current students and they just believe that there's these jobs that are gated off and saved for them. That's just not the case and they don't know that yet, but they will when they get out into the market.

Hannah Maruyama [00:40:31]:
So for those parents who are wanting to equip their 16 to 20 year olds to go into tech jobs now, specifically software development, what skill stack would you recommend they learn and where would you recommend it? How would you recommend they look for jobs for their first job?

Joe Kowalski [00:40:44]:
Anyone, degree or no degree, has an uphill battle getting that first job. Once you've gained that experience though, it gets easier. So how can you short circuit that process? The first thing I would say is you've gotta be self aware. Is tech something that you really wanna get into? Because you talk a lot about parents or their kids, and they can't live vicariously through their children. So if their children don't have a real desire to get in the tech, then no matter what they do, they're gonna have an uphill battle. They need the intellectual curiosity because at no point are you done learning. Jack is such a huge field, and it's changing all the time. If you would ask me this question in the seventies, I would have said COBOL.

Joe Kowalski [00:41:39]:
In the nineties, it would have been VB, and then 2000, it'd be web development. What can you do now? And there's just such a breadth. A safe stack would be JavaScript, HTML, c sharp, dot net, microservices, Python, some of these skill sets. But when I say that, I don't want people to think that they should just go get a book on JavaScript and read the book. If they have a real desire, here's how you short circuit it. And here's how I hired developers for 25 years. I would ask them the question. Tell me about a project that you built outside of work or school.

Joe Kowalski [00:42:28]:
And I would wait. And if their eyes lit up, if they caught fire about the D and D character builder they built or the database they built for their writing interests. And they talked to me about how they were up till 2 in the morning learning how to solve this specific problem because I knew syntax is irrelevant. At this point, I know 12 different programming languages. I'm a full stack developer. And even though I'm retired, I'm currently learning a new one because I'm interested in keeping up with the current tech. Let the problem you're trying to solve be the guide for what you wanna do. I, again, I have 6 kids.

Joe Kowalski [00:43:17]:
My oldest son is 24. He was interested in tech. And so at 12 years old, I was teaching him c sharp and game design. He went on to be a QA engineer in my company. And then our lead mobile developer, who's now 24 years old doing mobile dev. My current 17 year old liked tech but not like a business. So he learned unreal engine and is now on his second game that he's building because he enjoys building games. Know yourself.

Joe Kowalski [00:43:58]:
Know whether or not you're self aware enough to this is my current passion, and then solve a problem and build a project and let that be your guiding light. At that point, when you have enough skills and projects behind you, building your cover letter specific to the job, catering your resume specific to the job. And if you happen to get that interview talking about those projects that set you on fire, that display your passion for what it is they're looking for, displaying how you can bring value to the organization. Those are really great ways to signal to a future employer that you're worth hiring and investing in.

Hannah Maruyama [00:44:48]:
Wow. That was killer. That was killer advice. And I really hope people take that one to heart because I cannot agree more that the first job is the hardest one especially in the new industry, especially when you're first coming out of high school, especially when you're trying to get your 1st career, 1st job. That one's the most difficult. And if you can find the right spot and the right company and the right fit, it can just change the way you are able to learn and what you are able to learn and the type of people who are able to teach you. That's such good advice. That's so awesome.

Joe Kowalski [00:45:23]:
Now I'm gonna say something counterintuitive here. When I talk to early college kids or high school grads who want to be entrepreneurs down the road, I often tell them, look at the world as a bag of skills. And one of the first skills that anyone should acquire if they're looking to be a polymath, if they're looking to start their own business eventually, or even if they're okay with the journey of switching skills as they grow up is sales. A sales job is easy to get because everyone's looking for good salespeople, and they're willing to give almost anyone a shot. Acquiring sales skills no matter what you do in the future will pay off dividends. Now I had a number of sales skills. One of the jobs we didn't talk about before I was in the factory is I was an audio engineer, And my first sales job was in Guitar Center, selling pro audio equipment and learning how to talk to customers, learning how to answer their questions and objections, learning how to sell them the gear they needed. And that now led to me be interested in recording bands for a living.

Joe Kowalski [00:46:44]:
One of the first jobs or careers, businesses I tried to start. Right? And I worked with Dave Grohl after Kurt Cobain died and helped him on the soundtrack that he built for the X Files. I worked with Barrett Jones. I worked with Quincy Adams because I happen to be in that studio. Knowing those sales skills is super imperative because that will help you in the interview. That will help you come review time, and that will certainly help you build a business.

Hannah Maruyama [00:47:20]:
There's been so many takeaway. This has been such a good interview. There's so many takeaways from this, and I just so many high points that I hope people take away from this. But if you're a listener of the podcast, then you know that Ryan and I are 100% percent in agreement with Joe that if you can learn sales, sales is everything. Everything is sales. If you can learn that, you can, 1, always be able to put a roof over your head. 2, anybody can learn it. Anyone.

Hannah Maruyama [00:47:44]:
I don't care. Anybody. Anybody under the sun. And once you figure out that core skill set which is communication and persuasion and empathy and listening. Once you figure that out, you can take that skill and apply it to any different type of career exactly as Joe did. And I just feel like this has been such a packed interview, and I just wanna make sure that we hit everything that you wanna hit because I wanna be respectful of your time. Is there any final thoughts that you have that you wanna make sure people take away from your experience that they can relate to their own life so that they can either change their job or they can encourage their child to find their first big job that they want.

Joe Kowalski [00:48:26]:
We talked and we touched on a lot of points. And then people will say as a euphemism, follow your passions. And I don't necessarily believe on following your passions as much as following the dopamine and using that to build skills that are useful to bring value and be fearless. This is the final big point that I wanted to make. I was working for Fortune 500 Companies. I graduated my way as a senior dev, and I always had wanted to start my own business. Done it like I said in the studio in the past. But I was on the track of being stuck in a cubicle, making a great salary, flying all over the country, doing what I felt was worthwhile, but I still wasn't fulfilled.

Joe Kowalski [00:49:17]:
In 2000, I got cancer, Hodgkin's lymphoma. And when I went into our mission, I realized that I could do anything that I wanted. What's the worst that's gonna happen? Am I gonna die? That was the impetus for me to be fearless enough to start my own business in 2003 at 28 years old. And that's when I started one of the very first SaaS companies. And the amount of skills that I had acquired up to that point certainly helped me get there. But that was nothing compared to the amount of skills I needed to develop over those next 20 years, whether it was leadership, business management, operations, marketing, like every aspect that requires to build a very large and successful tech company. To spend the next 20 years showing up every single day, one day at a time. So being fearless, being able to know yourself, what you want, and being able to change your mind, and sacrifice that sunk cost for opportunity cost and starting over.

Joe Kowalski [00:50:34]:
I think those are very important skill sets and mindsets to be mindful of.

Hannah Maruyama [00:50:42]:
Oh, man. What? I am ready to run through a wall after this episode, Joe. I am so inspired. I'm so fired up. I hope, folks, if you love this, please drop a review for Joe. I also feel like we might get some questions from this one, so I'll preemptively ask you if you might be willing to do a mailbag if people have questions because I think that there's gonna be. But if you folks have questions for Joe, go ahead and contact us at the podcast and let Ryan and I know what questions you have for Joe. And then if we can get him back on to answer some, we might be able to do that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:51:15]:
And we have access to somebody with a lot of experience with a lot of insight into tech and into how to build businesses and learn actionable skills, obviously. And so this has been such a good episode. And, Joe, so grateful for your time and for your story and for giving all of this to our degree free podcast listeners. Thank you so much.

Joe Kowalski [00:51:38]:
My pleasure.