About this episode
Travis Griffin wanted to be a police officer, until he worked out what they get paid. At the end of a college campus tour, sweating through jeans and a jacket on a day that turned hot, his mother looked at him and told him he was going to UNC Wilmington. He had not applied anywhere else.
He came back from a year away into the IT program instead of computer science, and it fit. Since then he has gone from database administrator at Barings to Abrigo, through cloud operations and cloud engineering, to senior AI engineer. He now runs five AI agents to build a product on nights and weekends while keeping the day job.
In this episode he tells DeVanté about calling an investment firm to ask about his own resume before they had started reading applications, what he thinks happens to junior engineers now, and why leading his own company made him better at working for someone else.
He is the founder of Simcha Solutions and is launching Simcha DB Studio. Simcha is Hebrew for joy.
CHAPTERS 0:00 [open] 1:00 [the question] 3:30 [how his mother picked his college] 5:19 [the year away] 8:23 [the phone call that got him hired] 11:32 [what a DBA actually does] 15:42 [certifications] 18:05 [finding AI] 20:58 [ten Travises] 23:05 [building Simcha with five agents] 27:06 [leading vs contributing] 32:16 [what happens to juniors] 35:11 [what he'd tell a 20-year-old]
Travis Griffin LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/travisdgriffin/ simchadbstudio.com simchasolutions.com
DeVanté Pickering LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/devante-pickering/ pick2solutions.com
Ctrl Shift. Shortcuts for building longevity. Hosted by DeVanté Pickering. Produced by Vision Media Partners.
