Manuel Martinez hosts the Career Downloads podcast where he interviews a different guest each episode to learn about their individual and diverse backgrounds, job history, and techniques they use to manage their career. So plug in and download the knowledge.
Career Downloads
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73 episodes
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61
Podcast Authority
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Podcast Overview
Manuel Martinez hosts the Career Downloads podcast where he interviews a different guest each episode to learn about their individual and diverse backgrounds, job history, and techniques they use to manage their career. So plug in and download the knowledge.
Language
🇺🇲
Publishing Since
7/11/2024
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Recent Episodes
June 23, 2026
From Pizza Shop to Enterprise Software Founder with Chris Day
He had no IT background, no plan, and was living in a tree house between jobs. Then one interview sent him somewhere he never expected. Chris Day grew up in Silicon Valley, bounced through pizza shops, Chili's, and bartending gigs, and graduated UC Santa Cruz with a self-designed degree in communication, sociology, and psychology. He had no roadmap for what came next. What happened next was an interview for an account executive role that turned into an offer to teach software - and a career that has now stretched more than two decades, all the way to founding a SaaS company he is still actively building today. This conversation covers the full arc: how Chris went from software instructor to consultant to custom software developer to building A1 Enterprise, an 18-module enterprise risk management platform that every single feature of has come directly from real users. WHAT CHRIS DAY DOES NOW: Chris is the Founder and CEO of A1 Enterprise, a SaaS company specializing in enterprise risk management software. The A1 Honeycomb platform covers 18 modules across risk, compliance, workers compensation, insurance, and more - all built from user feedback over 16 years of product development. KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS CONVERSATION: The accidental pivot is still a pivot Chris did not plan to go into tech. A wrong-turn interview and a suggested redirect from an interviewer landed him in front of a classroom. He said yes anyway. That moment started everything. Bombing a class is data, not a verdict When Chris failed his first Microsoft Access class - ill-prepared, with his father in surgery that day - he did not quit. He went back to the drawing board, studied harder, and within three to six months was teaching every Access class the center offered. Teaching and doing together is dynamite Chris's own words. He learned that knowing your material well enough to teach it is one thing. Actually building something for a real client changes everything. The two together accelerated his growth faster than either could alone. Know your limits - and then push them Chris was not a developer. He knew that. He acknowledged it, asked for help, and used that awareness to build around his gaps rather than pretend they did not exist. The distinction, as he put it, is between knowing your limits and staying within them versus pushing them while asking for help. Your customer base is your best product team After 16 years of development, Chris says every feature in A1 Enterprise has come from a user. No assumptions, no guessing. Real needs from real people, built in. TOPICS COVERED: - Growing up in Silicon Valley with no career direction - Working through food service and bartending in his 20s - How a self-designed degree in communication, sociology, and psychology prepared him for tech - Discovering the software instructor role at New Horizons computer training center - What it took to teach technology to 30 different types of learners in one room - The Microsoft Access failure that changed how he prepared for everything - How moonlighting consulting gigs came out of his teaching clients - The construction company project that launched A1 Enterprise - Presenting a live web application to 100 people from a personal laptop with no IT support - Building a remote development team out of a garage using Citrix and a T1 line - The 2008 market crash decision to stop doing custom work and build a product - Sixteen years of ERM platform development under the radar - The 2018 rebrand that brought A1 Honeycomb into the open - Working with UNLV Lee Business School students - Why staying open matters more than having a plan WHO THIS EPISODE IS FOR: - Anyone in their 20s who feels behind and does not have a clear direction yet - People considering a career pivot into tech without a traditional tech background - Early-career professionals trying to decide whether to stay in a role or make a move - Self-taught learners who want to know how far curiosity and self-study can take you - Founders or aspiring entrepreneurs interested in how software products are built from real customer feedback - Anyone who has failed at something on the job and wondered whether to push through CONNECT WITH CHRIS DAY: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/a1enterprisechrisday/ ABOUT CAREER DOWNLOADS: Career Downloads explores technology careers through conversations with professionals who share their journeys, lessons learned, and practical advice. Hosted by Manuel Martinez, each episode exposes listeners to different technology roles and helps them manage their own careers more successfully. New episodes release every Tuesday. Connect with Career Downloads: Website: https://careerdownloads.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/career-downloads YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@careerdownloads TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@careerdownloads Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/careerdownloads FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Career-Downloads/61561144531249
June 9, 2026
From Curiosity to Cloud Engineering Leadership with Jesse Taylor | Ep070
<p>He broke the family computer in 8th grade trying to teach himself DOS. The repair shop he took it to hired him for the summer. That is how Jesse Taylor's career in technology began.</p><p></p><p>Jesse Taylor is the Senior Manager of Cloud and Systems Engineering at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His path to that role spans Apple retail, college newspaper IT, media companies, a hotel property that declared bankruptcy, and a first month on the job that collided with Hurricane Sandy. None of it was planned. All of it was intentional.</p><p></p><p>Jesse grew up in Napa, California, and moved to Las Vegas when his father, a Department of Defense employee, had to relocate to keep his retirement after the BRAC military base closures in the early 1990s. He worked at the Apple Fashion Show store during college, helped build Apple enterprise environments at the Art Institute of Las Vegas, and spent years supporting Mac-heavy newsrooms for Greenspun Media Group. He later served as virtual CTO for Niche Media's luxury magazine portfolio - a role that put him in a New York data center days after Hurricane Sandy flooded the floors below it.</p><p></p><p>WHAT JESSE TAYLOR DOES NOW:</p><p>Jesse leads the Cloud and Systems Engineering team at UNLV, overseeing server virtualization, storage, and enterprise infrastructure. He previously managed identity and access management for the university for over six years, including a campus-wide migration to Okta during the pandemic. He chairs SIM Nevada and advocates for broadband access policy across the state.</p><p></p><p>KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS CONVERSATION:</p><p>The art of listening is a technical skill</p><p>Apple retail trained Jesse to evaluate needs and find the right-sized solution - not the most expensive, not the cheapest. That skill carried across every role he held afterward.</p><p></p><p>Work retail at least once</p><p>Jesse believes retail teaches people skills that technical training cannot: reading emotions, tracking speech patterns, knowing when to keep talking and when to stop. He calls those skills essential for anyone working in IT.</p><p></p><p>You have to leave where you love working to grow</p><p>Early in his Apple career, a trainer told Jesse that sometimes the only way to develop is to leave a role you love and go get skills you cannot get where you are. He applied that lesson repeatedly, moving through organizations to build range.</p><p></p><p>The smartest person still has to be a good team player</p><p>Skill gets you in the room. Attitude keeps you in the conversation. Jesse is direct: you can be the most talented person on the team and still be someone no one wants to work with.</p><p></p><p>People are watching even when you don't think they are</p><p>Multiple roles in Jesse's career came through former managers or colleagues who remembered how he worked. Not because he networked for it - because he did the job well and treated people well while he did it.</p><p></p><p>TOPICS COVERED:</p><ul><li>Breaking his home PC in 8th grade and landing his first tech job because of it</li><li>Apple retail training and right-sizing solutions for customers</li><li>Why every IT professional should have a retail job in their background</li><li>Mac enterprise skills built at the Art Institute and Greenspun Media Group</li><li>Prioritizing IT tickets and learning to work with executives</li><li>Moving Niche Media to Google Workspace in one day during Hurricane Sandy</li><li>Returning to UNLV and building the identity and access management function</li><li>Planning and executing a campus-wide Okta migration during the pandemic</li><li>Broadband access advocacy and his father's internet setup in rural Nevada</li><li>Eduroam and why UNLV students can open a laptop at Stanford and get online instantly</li><li>SIM Nevada growing from under 15 members during the pandemic to over 100</li></ul><p></p><p>WHO THIS EPISODE IS FOR:</p><ul><li>Early-career IT professionals wondering if they need to stay in one place to grow</li><li>Anyone moving from technical roles toward engineering leadership or strategy</li><li>Tech professionals thinking about community involvement and professional organizations</li><li>IT managers working on large-scale migrations who want a real account of what planning actually looks like</li><li>Anyone who has stayed too long at a job they loved because they were comfortable</li></ul><p></p><p>CONNECT WITH JESSE TAYLOR:</p><p>LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessetaylorlv/">https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessetaylorlv/</a></p><p></p><p>ABOUT CAREER DOWNLOADS:</p><p>Career Downloads explores technology careers through conversations with professionals who share their journeys, lessons learned, and practical advice. Hosted by Manuel Martinez, each episode exposes listeners to different technology roles and helps them manage their own careers more successfully. New episodes release every Tuesday.</p><p></p><p>Connect with Career Downloads:</p><p>Website: <a href="https://careerdownloads.com" style="color:rgb(187,190,191);">https://careerdownloads.com</a></p><p>LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/career-downloads" style="color:rgb(187,190,191);">https://www.linkedin.com/company/career-downloads</a></p><p>YouTube: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@careerdownloads?sub_confirmation=1" style="color:rgb(187,190,191);">https://www.youtube.com/@careerdownloads</a></p><p>TikTok: <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@careerdownloads" style="color:rgb(187,190,191);">https://www.tiktok.com/@careerdownloads</a></p><p>Instagram: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/careerdownloads" style="color:rgb(187,190,191);">https://www.instagram.com/careerdownloads</a></p><p>FaceBook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/people/Career-Downloads/61561144531249" style="color:rgb(187,190,191);">https://www.facebook.com/people/Career-Downloads/61561144531249</a></p>
May 19, 2026
From PBX Operator to Chief Innovation Officer with Rachel Papka | Ep069
What do you do when healthcare is your calling but the patient side is not your path? Rachel Papka figured that out the long way.<br /> <br /> She started at a hospital as a PBX phone operator. Worked through ER registration, landed in radiology, and was asked to become a super user when the hospital adopted its first electronic medical record. There were no certifications for healthcare technology at that time. No clear career path. She learned on the job and never looked back.<br /> <br /> That first step grew into 15 years inside a health system, a three-year run overseeing Nevada's health information exchange, and eventually the Chief Innovation Officer role at Steinberg Diagnostic Medical Imaging. Steinberg is now part of Intermountain Health. Her title changed, but her approach never did: understand the process, understand the people, then match the technology to both.<br /> <br /> But as much as this episode covers healthcare technology, it really covers something else: learning to show up better when the pressure is on. Rachel talks openly about being "seen as difficult" early in her career, what a 360 assessment cost her when it was delivered without care, and the year her doctor gave her the evaluation that changed everything: "Rachel, you're one of the most intelligent people I'll ever meet. You're great with technology. You have implemented and you've changed so much. Now it's time to work on the people."<br /> <br /> She shares how mentors and business coaches play different roles, why her emotional responses to feedback were not weakness but a signal about how feedback was being delivered, and the small specific practice she uses to keep herself grounded when a tough conversation is about to go sideways.<br /> <br /> WHAT RACHEL PAPKA DOES NOW:<br /> Rachel is the Chief Innovation Officer at Steinberg Diagnostic Medical Imaging (now part of Intermountain Health), where she oversees change management, the contact center handling close to 3,000 calls per day, and the Health Information Technology department. She describes her role as having one foot in operations and one foot in technology.<br /> <br /> KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS CONVERSATION:<br /> <br /> Process first, people second, technology third<br /> Before any implementation, Rachel asks: is there even a need for technology? She maps the workflow, identifies who the end users are, and only then matches the technology to that reality.<br /> <br /> Mentors and business coaches are not the same thing<br /> A mentor is like a cricket on your shoulder - deeply invested in who you are, growing with you over time, and available when you are in crisis. A business coach is trained, brought in for a specific event or goal, and gives you tools. Both serve a real function and they are not interchangeable.<br /> <br /> How feedback is delivered determines whether it can be received<br /> Rachel broke down in early feedback sessions, which got labeled as being difficult or emotional. But the problem was not her. It was feedback arriving without context, care, or a path forward. Understanding that difference changed how she receives criticism and how she gives it.<br /> <br /> Finding your grounding tool matters<br /> Rachel worked with her coach for eight months before realizing that reaching for her water bottle was her natural grounding move in a high-stakes moment. Finding your own version of that is worth the effort.<br /> <br /> Reflect on what went well before building what comes next<br /> Rachel's annual family practice is to review the vision board from the prior year and ask only: what went well? Not what didn't. Then she builds the vision for the year ahead. She calls the whole practice reflecting and projecting.<br /> <br /> TOPICS COVERED:<br /> - Starting as a PBX phone operator and finding healthcare technology by accident<br /> - Why nursing wasn't for her and what that self-knowledge gave her<br />
73 total episodes available
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