Before I started R. Alliance with Chris, and before I was an IT executive and manager, I was a software developer. The coolest thing about that work is that you get to learn all about how other people do their jobs, and learning all the different ways that people make things happen never gets old. Over the past 20 years I’ve peeked behind the curtains in the fields of government, utilities, market research, marketing, insurance, finance, computer hardware, human resources, quality and safety testing, and transportation / logistics. (Check my bio to see more.)
The second coolest thing about being a programmer is once we learn how other people do their jobs, we get to figure out how to write software to make their jobs easier. We challenge ourselves to come up with ways to help other people get better at what they do, and in the process we get better ourselves.
That’s why I love puzzles and games. Not because there are winners and losers, but because when I win a game or finish a puzzle it means I’m doing something right. it’s got all sorts of inherent rewards, and getting faster and better and beating your own high score means that you’re doing it even righter and better than before.
Software development is the best of both solving puzzles and doing things better: writing better code helps you solve business problems in a better way, and that helps people get better at their job.
I realized a few years ago that my passion has never actually been about writing software. That’s just been the vehicle for figuring out how things work and then making them work better. Like everyone else, I started doing this at a very tactical level by teaching myself how to write computer program (my first application: a graphical solitaire peg game written in Visual Basic). Over time as I moved into executive leadership roles, the challenges became more and more strategic in nature. The scope of what we were doing grew larger, but it was always that same trifecta of problem solving: the drive to get better and do better and be better.
That’s why I jumped at the chance to partner with Chris. She’s got as varied a career background as I do, except that her focus has been figuring out how People work and enabling them to work better. When we met we instantly bonded over both the similarities and differences of what fueled us, and we soon realized how well things worked when we combined our perspectives. And so was born R. Alliance and our mantra of “People and Process, Together”.
R. Alliance isn’t just a job for us; it’s a whole new way of looking at the world. We learn from each other every day and continually challenge ourselves and each other to do better, to get better, and to be better. And we do the same with our clients. Fixing things for people can be fulfilling, but there’s nothing more rewarding than seeing someone else take what you’ve shown them and apply it on their own.
That’s why I got into this business. To help other people get better at getting better. To help people learn how to lift themselves up, and in the process to keep getting better at it myself.
I hope that you will spend some time here at RAlliance.com getting to know us better. Please feel free to let us know if there’s anything we can do for you, and be sure to Link / Friend / Follow / Subscribe / Tweet / and otherwise Share our site with your network!
-Scott Waletzko
R. Alliance, LLC 