Michael Gilchrist

My first job in tech was as a Technical Productivity Consultant, providing off-the-shelf software support to Fortune 500 companies. I helped people get more out of Excel and other everyday applications, often with no screen to look at, so all I could do was ask the right questions until I really understood how things worked. Everything I've learned since, I've learned that way.

From there I moved into medical devices, leading the rollout and training of complex systems in hospitals, coordinating multiple departments to ensure smooth adoption and usage in environments that never slow down. No two hospitals ran the same way, so I broke every installation down, customer by customer, distilling it into terms their teams understood to set it up for success in the field. All the while, I was streamlining and automating our own internal processes to cut out the long, tedious work.

Now I'm on the engineering side, building those systems instead of rolling them out. And I approach code the same way: figure out what's actually needed, build that, and leave the rest out.

I'm the same way at home, automating anything and everything. And my favorite fixes remove steps instead of adding options. Mostly, I just like solving hard problems and helping people do their work better.