What Has Made You So Successful in Tech?
“My career’s thrived out of making decisions that haven’t followed the normal path.”
I’ve done really well out of it. I started coding young, when I was 11 years old, and was one of Apple’s first interns. Back then, I decided that working for Apple full time was a bad idea.
That was during the John Sculley days when his leadership nearly ended the company. I thought they were going to go out of business, so I left.
I’m Steve Brain, EVP of Technical Product Management at Trilogy.
Where Did Your Unconventional Decision-Making Take You?
Some years later, I got a weird call and made the decision to move to Seattle.
In the mid 2000’s going to work for some company selling books on the internet was risky. Seattle was the back end of nowhere.
I spent seven years at Amazon – and did well there. So, I decided to move to Utah to live in a ski town, because my kids wanted to ski race. Not the obvious tech hub of choice, but a great decision.
I was surprised at the cool tech jobs there!
How Did You Find Your Way to Trilogy?
Trilogy was really a continuation of decisions I was already making. The last four years have been more fulfilling and successful than I ever could have expected.
I entered this industry to do technical work and while I do lead and manage here, I still spend a significant amount of time doing technical work. And it's always challenging.
It’s one of the most interesting opportunities I’ve had in my career.
Is Trilogy Different from Other Tech Companies?
With West Coast style tech jobs, you have a choice between two models. A job at the big companies like Amazon, Google or Meta where you’re a small cog in a big machine.
Or you can get a tech startup job with the scramble to get product market fit. What I love about Trilogy is that it’s neither of those things.
Here I get the chance to work in a smaller environment, but I still have the opportunity to have a big impact. I work on over 100 products, everything from evaluating a medical device company to moving telecom charging to the cloud.
What Are You Working on Right Now?
I’m really excited about this product, it’s called CloudFix and it finds AWS cost saving opportunities, and automates the fixing of them.
What I did was I took a problem that could be solved in this way and solved it with much less code in a simpler way. Being challenged like this is what keeps me interested and engaged. Not being challenged by someone else, but by the work.
I want to know how we can do it better.
Learn more about Trilogy here.
What’s it Like Working at Trilogy?
Talking to old colleagues and friends from Amazon you tell them, “You can do this without 9 hours of meetings a day.” They insist that it will never work for them.
We don’t do the things that conventional companies do.
Here, I can control my schedule, get up early, and host calls with colleagues in Dubai, India or Eastern Europe. I can take a break to ride my bike, and then get some deep work done in the afternoon.
What Makes the Role a Perfect Fit for You?
Thinking differently comes from having ideas outdoors.
I decided to move back to the northern part of Washington State – to Bellingham - and build a house in a forested area. I turned down the chance to move to Silicon Valley multiple times and I have no interest in being there. That’s not for me or my family.
I wouldn’t have predicted arriving here, after three years and counting. And I never would have guessed that my role would have expanded to be what it is today.
But I’m glad that it has.
I get to innovate without roadblocks because I got hired through Crossover.
What does a CTO and TPM do at Trilogy? Steve has the answers.
