Tag Archive for: veterans

Veteran Employees At Jama Software, we have the utmost respect for those who serve in the United States Military, and we honor them today and every day.

In this post, we celebrate some of our employees who have transitioned from military to tech. Though we are proud of the many Veterans that are currently Jama Software employees, today we’ll be featuring two of our employees who were gracious enough to tell us about their experience serving in the United States Military, and how it shaped their life and career.

“In the face of impossible odds, people who love this country, can change it.” – Barack Obama

Meet Mandi Walker:

Walker served in the Army for 14 years before joining Jama Software as our Senior Information Security Analyst. Reaching Sergeant ranking, Walker’s service took her all over the world – everywhere from Fort Lewis WA, to Vilseck, Germany. She also did three tours in the Middle East, one in Afghanistan and two in Iraq.

Meet Pete Heirendt: 

Heirendt served in the Navy for seven years, first in the Atlantic fleet from New London, Connecticut, and then the Pacific fleet from San Diego, California. Heirendt left the Navy after reaching Lieutenant (O-3) ranking and is now a Senior Software Engineer at Jama Software.

Why did you initially enlist?

For Walker, the answer to why she enlisted was quite simple. “Serving in the military has always been a family tradition,” she said. “Generally, in my family, it was the men who served… I enjoyed breaking that tradition.”

For Heirendt, it was a little more complicated. He wanted a bigger challenge and to see the world. But he was also halfway through college and needed money in order to complete his degree. He tells the story below.

“In the mid-1980’s I was half-way through college, working on a Computer Science degree, and needed money to finish college when a letter came from the US Navy to recruit college students to sign up early for their Nuclear Submarine Officer program, which offered money while you finished your college degree. I liked that I’d be committed to learning nuclear engineering despite having no background or classes in it — it was a sink-or-swim deal since you had to first sign a 5-year contract.”

 

“The Army ingrained their values into me while I was serving, and to this day I still hold myself to those same standards: Loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage.” – Mandi Walker

When did you leave? What was the process like?

In February of 2016, Walker decided to leave the Army and resume her civilian life. The process, she says, wasn’t exactly simple. “It was stressful transitioning from a life that was structured and disciplined to the uncertainty and chaos of the civilian world. Even though it was stressful, and still is, at times, it was also exciting, the new and unknown and a great deal of freedom you don’t get while serving.”

For Heirendt, it was his love for computer science and ultimately his career that led him to leave the Navy. “I never intended to make Navy-life a long-term career, because I really did want to get back to programming computers again,” he said. “After serving my 3-year sea tour I rotated to shore duty in Jacksonville, FL in 1992 where I enrolled in night classes at the University of North Florida to get a Masters in Computer Science.”

It was perfect timing, he said. His first course was about a new thing called TCP/UDP sockets that let computers communicate over something called a “network.”  Heirendt reminisces: “I bought a 386 PC and booted it up in one of the precursors to Linux called 386-BSD, so I could do my TCP-socket network programming at home rather then drive across town to the campus lab (this was before remote access from home). This learning experience got me completely hooked!”

How did (does) your military experience affect your life today?

While enlisting in the Military certainly comes with its set of challenges and sacrifices, both Walker and Heirendt believe that they learned lifelong lessons from their service. “The Army ingrained their values into me while I was serving, and to this day I still hold myself to those same standards: Loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage,” said Walker.

Heirendt believes his time in the Navy gave him the tools he needed for a successful career, he said it’s easy for him to learn complex distributed systems and risk management. And that his time in the military gave him the ability to work well on a team and clearly communicate. “In 1995 I got my first job as a software engineer, and 25 years later I never stop loving and learning this field. At this point I cannot imagine ever stopping what I do,” said Heirendt.

What do you miss about being in the Military?

When asked what aspect of serving in the Military they miss, both Heirendt and Walker had definitive answers. Heirendt says what he misses the most is “a culture that pushes everyone to go to the edge of their limits, both mentally and physically.”

“I miss the camaraderie,” says Walker. “At every duty station, I met so many interesting people from completely different backgrounds and cultures. Some of the best friends I have had in my life I met while serving.”

“I think it’s important for civilians to understand that most veterans, especially those who served in combat, didn’t all come home whole, or are still healing, physically, mentally, and emotionally from their experiences.” – Mandi Walker

Is there anything you wish civilians understood about military service?

There sometimes can be a divide between civilians and Veterans – something that’s hard to explain unless you’ve had the experience of serving in the Military. Heirendt and Walker weigh in on this:

“Every veteran has different experiences in the military, some great ones, and some experiences that were not so great,” says Walker. “I think it’s important for civilians to understand that most veterans, especially those who served in combat, didn’t all come home whole, or are still healing, physically, mentally, and emotionally from their experiences, so a little extra patience a little more understanding for them would be a good thing. It might be frustrating at times, but these are men and women who were willing to sacrifice their lives for your freedom.”

For Heirendt, what he wishes civilians knew about military services comes in the form of advice. “The military can be a great stepping stone in a person’s career and life,” he says.

Today on Veterans Day, as we honor and celebrate our Veterans, let’s remember the fundamental self-sacrifice made by those who have enlisted, and take time to thank them for doing so. From all of us at Jama Software, thank you to our nation’s Veterans.

Interested in launching a career at Jama Software? View our open positions.
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From left, Jama Software’s Chloe Elliott and Dana Medhaug.

On Veterans Day at Jama Software, we honor the service of all military veterans, starting with two of our own: Chloe Elliott and Dana Medhaug.  

Elliott and Medhaug met at Milwaukie Junior High outside of Portland, Oregon, in the ’90s before their divergent yet overlapping paths led them to Jama. Both enlisted in the military, both turned an interest in code into a career in tech and both now sit on Jama’s Customer Care team. Medhaug, a technical support engineer, has been at Jama for a year and a half, while Elliott, a community manager, started in the spring.  

When Elliott arrived at Jama, she hadn’t seen Medhaug since their eighth-grade graduation. “I saw him and was like, ‘What’s your last name?’” Elliott recounts. Once they recognized each other, they realized their lives had plenty of parallels.  

Why They Enlisted  

After high school, Medhaug walked into an Army recruiting office looking for structure and a source of adventure. Given the choice between serving in Washington, Colorado, Texas, Germany or Korea, Medhaug opted for Texas, where he was an M1A2 Armor Crewman: “At the time I thought driving a tank in Texas would be pretty cool,” he says. And was it? “Yes, looking back I believe I made the right choice when I chose Texas. I made some lifelong friendships and it was the perfect training environment for life in Iraq, where I was deployed for 18 months.”  

Elliott graduated from the University of Oregon in 2001, in the midst of a recession. She was working three different retail jobs when she enlisted in the Air Force to attend the Defense Language Institute, which offers instruction in more than two dozen languages.  

“Then,” Elliott says, “literally a month after I signed up, 9/11 happened. My friends were, like, ‘Obviously, you’re not going to go now.’ I said, ‘Actually, I feel I was meant to go. This was meant to happen.’” Elliott trained in Monterey, California, but like Medhaug, she would be stationed in Texas, where she served as an intelligence analyst in San Antonio (“Her military career was more interesting than mine,” adds Medhaug).    

The Other Boot Camp  

When their military service ended in the mid-2000s, neither Elliott nor Medhaug was planning on a tech career. “I’ve always been interested in coding,” Elliott says, “but Medhaug and I came up at a time when people were trying to figure out what even to do with computer programming.”  

Yet even when Elliott expressed an interest in computers, her high school counselor shut her down, telling her she would be “uncomfortable” in the computer science courses — despite the fact that Elliott was already taking AP math classes.   

“I wish I hadn’t listened to her, but I did,” Elliott says. “When I asked about computer science, it was like I had said, ‘I want to play on the football team.’ It wasn’t a thing girls did.”  

After she left the Air Force, Elliott initially worked in sales and marketing, but that wasn’t the right fit. “I like working with customers, but I don’t like having to sell them things,” she says.  

Elliott used her GI Bill to earn an MBA from Concordia University in Portland. After that, she opted to stay home for several years to be with her young children.   

“While I was home,” Elliott says, “I was crafting, designing. I was really interested in tech, but I always thought, ‘I’m not smart enough to do it.’ I thought the barrier to entry was just too high. But then I found this learn-to-code app. I thought it would tell me I was stupid, but once I started, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s all it is? I do the same thing when I create my knitting patterns.’ It was the same logic I’d been using all my life. Why does it seem like the keys to this industry are too hard to find?”  

Elliott’s triumph with the coding app was, she says, an “epiphany.” She tracked down every free resource she could find and started teaching herself to code. She still had more money left from her GI Bill, so she found a local code boot camp that accepted the GI Bill: PDX Code Guild.  

“I liked that PDX Code Guild was Python-based,” she says, “because I’m interested in data analysis and data science.” As soon as she started code boot camp, Elliott realized, “I need to work in tech. I love this.”   

From Construction to Coding 

Meanwhile, after leaving the Army, Medhaug worked in construction for 10 years. “I would get laid off every once in a while,” Medhaug reflects, because of dips in demand when the economy faltered.  

When he wasn’t working construction, Medhaug started teaching himself to code in CSS, JavaScript, and HTML. He also taught himself Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator and began building custom websites and graphics for fantasy football fans. “I had a customer base, and I was actually getting paid,” he says. “But I never saw myself doing the backend work. I didn’t think I was smart enough. I was like, “‘Programming is way too intense.’”  

Not until Medhaug was injured on the job and recovering from back surgery did he decide to pursue “some type of coding career” full time. Medhaug learned about PDX Code Guild and went for it even though he wasn’t fully versant in Python.   

“I decided, ‘OK, I’m going to go to this boot camp and kick butt,’” he says. “Everybody else in there had experience. They all had college degrees. I was the only one in there that was ex-construction. I didn’t know what they were doing at first, but I made it through, and then I interned at PDX Code Guild for a year after I graduated.”  

“He has 16,000 points on Treehouse now,” Elliott interjects. “I’m gunning to beat that.”  

Enter Jama  

Toward the end of his internship, Medhaug was sending out his resume and going to networking events, but he wasn’t enjoying himself at those meetups: small talk isn’t his favorite activity.

Luckily, WorkSource called Medhaug to prescreen him for the Business Support Internship at Jama.  

Initially, Medhaug hadn’t been interested in a support role; he was looking for a job as a junior developer or engineer. “I didn’t know if I’d like dealing with customers,” he says, “but I do. By nature, I like helping people, and I like problem solving.”  

When she finished code boot camp, Elliott was looking for the next opportunity to develop and deploy her skills. She had never worked in tech before, and even the job titles and functions were unfamiliar to her, so she decided to find a company where she could learn “by osmosis.”  

Elliott was drawn to support because it requires a holistic vision and versatile abilities: “You have access to all kinds of information,” she says, “and it requires a generalist application of your skills.” The Business Support Internship at Jama struck Elliott as the best way to launch her career in tech. 

Redefining “Mission Critical”  

Medhaug says his Army service changed him for the better: “I used to be kind of a screwup in high school,” he says, “but not anymore. I learned to take my job seriously.”  

After her time in the Air Force, Elliott finds day-to-day stressors easier to shake off. “Things that upset other people or seem like big deals are just not big deals to us,” she says. “We’re like, ‘It could be worse.’  

“For Medhaug, it’s probably, ‘Hey, at least I’m not sitting in a tank where it’s 130 degrees. At least I’m not sitting in a skiff, no windows, can’t bring my phone in, waiting for something bad to happen.’”  

It’s not just that military service gives a whole new meaning to the term “mission critical.” Military service requires that people put aside their individual fears and personal priorities to work as a cohesive whole: the ultimate teamwork.  

“If there’s one thing you learn in the military,” Elliott says, “it’s to think unselfishly about the mission. It’s not about you. I’m not saying everyone should join the military, but I think people are at their best when they think about the mission, not about themselves. I feel like Medhaug and I are aligned on that.”  

Military service requires fundamental self-sacrifice, and it’s those sacrifices we honor on Veterans Day. “I don’t know how to explain how many freedoms veterans give up,” Elliott says. “We literally know what it’s like not to have any kind of autonomy over your person, where you’re going, what you’re going to wear, what you’re going to do, how you’re going to think. I would do that all over again. Serving my country was one of the best things I ever did.”

Thank you to all of our nation’s veterans. Interested in launching a career at Jama? View our open positions.