How did you get started in the software industry? What was your first job title?

I started off with a summer job at a computer store doing hardware repair and some small systems programming in the late 1970s. After a detour into broadcasting, I returned to the tech industry in 1990 as an advisory production analyst, writing C programs at Prodigy, one of the original online services.

I started playing with computers in the early '80s, learning how to program on systems like the Commodore 64 and TI. I double majored in accounting and information systems in college. My first job was with a company called EDS, where I coded in C for six days a week, nine hours a day.

I didn't have access to computers growing up in a small town in India. My first exposure to programming was during my mechanical engineering degree when we had a project to optimize air conditioning systems. That's when I learned C. I was hired straight out of college by a consulting company in India as an Associate Systems Analyst. My first project was working on COBOL programming for Y2K.

My interest in programming started when my dad brought home a TI cartridge-based system from a garage sale when I was six. My first paid job was with a mortgage software company when I was 15. I cold-called them after a classmate lied about working there. I figured if he could get a job there, so could I. It turned out he had made it up, but I still managed to land the job.

Growing up in India, it was common to either become a doctor or an engineer. I was always into computers and started learning basic programming in 8th grade. My first job was as a software engineer for a startup. They had a debt collection agency and wanted to build a web-based collection software, which I developed for them.