On the lighter side of things , we ask the industry experts what makes them tick . . . .
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JG Heithcock , CEO , Retrospect
wWhat would you describe as your most especially memorable achievement ?
The parent company of Retrospect , Roxio , was acquired by Rovi in 2010 . I and the other leaders of the Retrospect business decided to take Retrospect private . Thanks to the efforts of everyone on the Retrospect team , we were able to rebuild both the product and the brand . Since going public , we have transitioned to simultaneous launches , Mac , Linux and Windows , in six languages , twice a year . We migrated our documentation to a searchable online system as well as developed a customer portal where our customers can see and renew their licenses and get support immediately . We virtualized our lab and testing center and went to a completely distributed work environment in 2016 . That is my most memorable achievement . Being acquired by StorCentric in 2019 is right after that !
What first made you think of a career in technology ?
I was pursuing a graduate degree in Mathematics when a friend bought a Macintosh Plus . This was my first experience with a ‘ What you see is what you get ’ interface . As soon as I saw that , I changed gears and went into software development . I had no business experience and was quite naïve about starting my own business . Perhaps that was for the best as , if I had known , I might have never made the attempt .
What style of management philosophy do you employ with your current position ?
Democratic , for the most part . You need to foster questions . You need to encourage feedback , if it is negative . You need to provide
communication across the team . But you also need to provide a vision and rally folk around it . At the end of the day , it is your teammates and employees who are doing the work . That work and those people need both support and acknowledgement .
What do you think is the current hot technology talking point ?
‘ Hot ’ technology is rarely a single thing . Instead , the talking point is the collection of tools that do a job that was hard before . Cloud-based , distributed , secure systems are useful tools . This is true both for backup software as well as the applications that make the data needing backup . Privacy and security , from ransomware or from accidents , also continue to be more critical to each of us . The talking point is what are we doing with each of these .
How do you deal with stress and unwind outside the office ?
Fortunately , I tend not to get stressed . I play games with my wife , my friends and my family . My bookshelf has steadily been taken over by board games ( Sagrada , Wingspan and Scythe are the current favorites ). I read ( mostly fiction ). I build things with my daughter ( we just
You need to encourage feedback , especially if it is negative . You need to provide communication across the team .
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