Annakate Ross
Hey, everybody and welcome to the Half Geek Half Human podcast where we explore the intersections between technology, business, and life. This podcast is powered by our company Atiba, an IT consulting and software development firm based here in Nashville, Tennessee. I’m Annakate Ross, a project manager working with our software and web clients.
Joey Baggott
And I’m Joey Baggott, director of sales and business development. I want to take a moment to introduce our first ever guest on the podcast. He is a guest and also our founder, fearless leader, and head geek of Atiba, JJ Rosen.
JJ Rosen
Thank you guys for having me.
Annakate Ross
Awesome! Well, we’re so glad you could be here. JJ the topic for the first episode of the Half Geek Half Human podcast is, it’s not personal, it’s just business – and how that whole concept is actually a myth. JJ wrote about this topic recently in the Tennessean and we’re really interested to dive into this and talk about also how this myth kind of plays into how Atiba approaches culture and ways of doing business.
Joey Baggott
Yeah, for sure and this is going to be kind of an inside look into what Atiba is really like from the leadership down and although it may look like JJ is forcing us to do this because he’s the founder of the company, I promise it was all organic and he wanted to do this. We wanted to have him on here. So, before we go too far into all that let’s just start with some questions because I think a lot of people are going to want to hear the story of how Atiba started in 1992. We’ve been around for 30 years this our anniversary. So back in the 90’s, when you started the business, can you tell us a little bit about like how you named the business and how you got started? Where JJ’s history began?
JJ Rosen
I would love to say that I had a business plan, and I had everything all planned out ahead of time but really Atiba was somewhat started by accident, a little bit organically. I was actually a psychology major in college and when I when I graduated, my original plan was to take a year off and work and save up some money and then go back to grad school in psychology. The way Atiba was formed – I got a job for the State of Tennessee which at the time sounded like a terrible job title. But it was better than waiting tables, it was a real job that you would get after college. The position was “Child Support Coordinator for the State of Tennessee which to me, sounded really bad – but it was a job and at least I was kind of getting in the game of the work world and it was interesting when I interviewed for the job. The guy who interviewed me, his name was George who ended up being my boss. I asked him what the job description was and what I’d be doing. He basically said it’s a brand-new position and all you need to do is try to think of ways to help the state collect more child support. So, in Tennessee they have child support collection offices in every county all around the state that help people who have not been able to get their child support pay. They help them collect. I asked him what that really means, and he kind of shrugged his shoulders and said, I don’t know, you could maybe do a newsletter or something for the offices. He basically said I could just do whatever I want. I thought that that sounded good with a lot of freedom and so I got the job and started. The first week or so, I went to visit a few of the child support offices and the first one I went to was in Manchester, Tennessee. It’s a tiny little office way out in the country – I noticed when I got there none of them had computers. So I thought one thing I can do to help them is to get them computers.
Annakate Ross
And what year was this? The late 1980’s or early 1990’s?
JJ Rosen
This was 1991. I was not a computer geek or nerd at the time, I figured they could at least have word processing. I talked to George my boss, and he thought it was a good idea. He gave me a budget and that’s when I got hooked on all things computers. I ended up getting their computers set up and then I just went all in. I got really interested in building computers, fixing them, and setting up networks. I found my calling – unfortunately it was after I got out of school but that’s how things got started. Essentially what happened is I decided maybe it would be neat to write some software to help them manage the child support office. I struggled through but I eventually wrote some software and started installing it at a few offices across the state. I was going to basically keep on doing that and then think about grad school when Anderson Consulting (Accenture now) got this big contract to do a child support management system that would be statewide. These guys from Anderson were in these expensive suits and I was just this kid in my cube. They kept coming over to over to me saying, we need you to modify your software because we’re going to use it to collect data which will eventually go into our software. They were assigning me a lot of things to do so I started thinking, they were charging like $200 an hour in 1992, and I was making $6 an hour. I thought maybe I could just quit and start my own little company and bee a computer consultant. So that’s how Atiba was formed. No real plan just – sort of by accident. Joey you asked about the name?
At the time, this was before the web was popular, so you didn’t have to worry about a domain name. The original name was Competitive Intelligence. I don’t know how I came up with it, I think I just made it up and printed some business cards.
Joey Baggott
I’m glad that didn’t stick.
JJ Rosen
So when the web started coming along, I realized I might need a shorter name. Something that was a little bit more domain name friendly, and even back then when you would try to get a name, a lot was taken already. Anything related to tech was already gone and so I spent hours every night trying to type in names – PC this or tech that – and pretty much I was hitting a wall. I’d been at a Vanderbilt basketball game, and the point guard’s name was Atiba Prater. I got home that night and started doing my domain search and was starting to make stuff up when I thought of his name, and for some reason I typed it in – and it was available! Then I looked up its meaning. It’s Swahili and means ‘one of understanding’ – so that was good enough. That’s how we ended up with our name and how Atiba got going.
Annakate Ross
I love that! You mentioned that unfortunately you realized what you were really interested in after you got this psychology degree. This kind of ties us back into the theme of this which is, it’s not business, it’s personal. When did you start thinking about this concept and applying it to business? Was it right away or when you had more employees? How did that start manifesting itself with Atiba?
JJ Rosen
Pretty much right off the bat. Hiring my first employee was scary. I’m sure for anybody who’s ever started a business or been an entrepreneur in some way, it’s scary to commit to someone else. You know you they are dependent upon you for their salary. I hired my first person; his name is Glenn – 25 years or so later he’s still going. The first few of us are all still together. When we started working, I don’t know that we were very healthy for one another. We were total workaholics but having fun. The .com stuff was starting to come along, so we pulled a lot of all-nighters and worked weekends. We liked it and were both cranking away, doing both IT and web development – a lot of web development day and night. We were both doing two shifts – spending so much time together that it went beyond coworker – basically we became really good friends. I guess in hindsight it makes sense, you have similar interests and having fun doing something new. I noticed this and thought, well this is kind of weird, but Glenn is becoming my best friend. I don’t know if he felt the same, but anyway…
With the next person we hired, who is still a big part of what we’re doing today – Matthew – the same thing happened. We were all spending a lot of time together and quickly developed something beyond just the work. Glenn’s daughter, at the time, was I think five or six years old. She was always in the background when we were talking so you start getting interested in someone’s life outside of work and what they’re doing. People say you need to keep a distance and very professional at work and it’s not healthy to build friendships. I just liked that the people I was working with so we would do stuff outside of work. Go to concerts together or a movie. I do remember thinking, well this kind of violates the general rule of work – keeping those two things separate, but I just found it so rewarding. I also realized everything is kind of personal. Whether you are at work or home, the common denominator is you. We all have feelings no matter where we are. I started realizing that was a big part of this, especially for like a small business. I also thought that may be a reason people would want to work at our company.
Joey Baggott
I’ll say to that too because it hit me one day, actually it wasn’t that long ago, when I was on a call with my boss. He said he said something that kind of struck me.
JJ Rosen
So it just kind of came naturally.
Joey Baggott
He said, I’m telling you this more as a friend, and I realized two things. One, I’ve actually become friends with my boss and two, I’ve become friends with my boss! Which was fine… just kidding. It’s all good, but I do feel like those relationships develop quickly at Atiba. That’s what really makes it a lot of fun to work here – people do become friends. Then you start to take things from in the office talking about work-related things, to even just the occasional text or a phone call on at night or the weekend. Just checking on how it’s going. How was your weekend? How are things going for you? How else do you take making things personal and apply it to how we work day-to-day at Atiba?
JJ Rosen
We just sort of kept on going – doing more and more projects and hiring more people. I definitely was afraid of losing that vibe. That’s really one of the reasons I like our company – it’s a little bit different. You always hear things change after hiring your first employee and changes again after two. So, I started getting more intentional about it. I think it’s important to be sincere/genuine – it’s kind of hard to fake. Everything is personal in the in the workplace essentially, so you start thinking what would be good to do. I should also say at the beginning this got me thinking, everybody should give input on what our culture should be like – that in itself is important. Just to ask people, how can we help you not just with work but with life in general – even outside of work. A lot of what we’ve done is from feedback and ideas from others. I remember when I hired Glenn and Matthew, I thought you’re supposed to have like two weeks of vacation, and you get these certain days off – this and that. Then I remember Glenn calling and to say, he needed to take Friday off to do something with his daughter. I just said do whatever you want – if anything I owe you the time – you don’t ever have to ask, just do whatever’s best for you. There’s no shame in that. So, it kind of started there having a lot of flexibility. That’s something I personally would like, and it seems like something we all want to have some control over.
There’s not that much separation between you at work and you at home so, flexibility around time is something that that we’ve always had. It makes sense because you need to know how you plan your day, and if something comes up that you need to do or maybe you just need a break – so I trust that’s real and just let people decide what they want to do on their own. Flexibility around time is something we established early. During the pandemic, it became a thing to work from home. We had this way before the pandemic – we called it ‘office optional’. People should work where you are most productive and comfortable. Some people are uncomfortable in an office, others get cabin fever and want to get out of their house and go into an office. Flexibility around where you work was added in pretty early.
Like Joey said, it may be weird to randomly text someone to check in to see how they’re doing, but you know it’s genuine. For example, you know someone who had Covid, and just like a friend you know outside of work – there’s no reason you shouldn’t check on them. It’s just setting that vibe.
Years later other people we started suggesting a few things that would kind of support what we’re saying. For example, we started a personal perks plan. Oftentimes a company will give you perks like a gym membership or a gift at the holidays. I started thinking about it and not everybody wants the same thing. People might have needs in their life that would be more valuable, so we started to personalize it. Whatever perks we’re giving, and we essentially just ask people, how can we help you outside of work? We had several things we just kept on going with, trying to establish this vibe. I would say early on it was just like a few of us so there was no need for that. It was just a bunch of folks hanging. As we’ve grown, we’ve tried to be more and more intentional about it.
Annakate Ross
Yeah, very cool. I was just going to ask – as we’ve grown, some of these things are easy to keep going and sometimes it’s a little bit harder. Do you have any examples? Sometimes people aren’t a good fit or sometimes clients aren’t a good fit – or sometimes you must draw a hard line. What kind of tips or maybe advice do you have to maintain this philosophy – trying to make things more personal and not just draw a hard line with business. How do you incorporate that when you do have to?
JJ Rosen
That’s a good question and because I think there’s a lot of kind of gray areas around optimizing, you know, not only on the personal side but the business part too – making sure the business is doing well.
Annakate Ross
To draw hard lines.
JJ Rosen
And there’s been some lessons learned with that. When someone has not been the right fit and you kind of become friends with them, that can be hard because you don’t want to hurt them, but at the same time you know you don’t want to hurt the business. This is an interesting example. Fifteen years or so ago, we hired this guy as an IT support person. He was a really nice guy, pretty young – early 20’s. He was a little shaky, not so much his skill set, but you knew he would be late – the soft skills. I remember there was one day he called – it was eleven o’clock and he was supposed to be there at nine. He said, “Hey you know I’m sorry man, I hit a deer on the way to work. I’m at the car repair shop.” I told him not to worry about it, take care of it, and thanks for letting me know. The next day it got to be around ten o’clock in the morning and he calls and says, “You’re not going to believe this but I hit another deer!” I thought, it’s unlikely but I guess it could happen. I told him, “Man you’re having the worst week, I hope things are okay. Get here when you can.” Of course, I didn’t hear from the rest of the day. By the third morning when said he had hit another deer coming into work, I realized maybe my desire to trust him was hurting the business. So. there’s been that balance a little bit. With friendships, I tend to be a pretty loyal person and if someone’s having a rough time or something comes up, I want to support them. Here and there it’s been a balance to figure that out and over the years and that’s hard.
Joey Baggott
I’ve always loved the deer story. We were talking about it before, and I thought we need to save this because I want to see Annakate’s genuine reaction to the story.
Annakate Ross
Two deer is hard to believe, let alone three…
JJ Rosen
I mean it could happen I guess?
Joey Baggott
At Atiba, we are solving all the tech problems and reducing the deer population in Tennessee.
JJ Rosen
Yeah, that’s right!
Annakate Ross
Thinning it out.
Joey Baggott
When I was sick with Covid, I was getting daily text messages from everybody I work – JJ, my boss, and co-workers just checking on me seeing if I needed anything. Of course, I was like no, I’m fine but thank you. My boss knows as someone with Celiac disease I can’t have anything with gluten in it. He sent me a massive care package out of the blue one day with all these gluten-free treats. I think that one thing Atiba does differently – we don’t only talk the talk, but we walk the walk. There are so many companies that preach we’re one big happy family and we love our employees – brah rah this rah rah that. At Atiba, we don’t explicitly say it, but they really do make it a family environment. I know if I ever have something with my kids, it’s no problem. I can go do it without having to take vacation. Just let us know and go enjoy your time. The personal perks are what makes Atiba really cool, and you don’t put people in the position to feel awkward or uncomfortable. The office being optional has been great cause it’s gives employees time to really focus on their family and making sure that everybody’s happy and healthy. Also not having an hour plus commute downtown if they don’t have to – so that’s always a win. I wanted to point those couple things out because that kind of comes from the top down. Where Atiba is going in the future is going to be driven from this. It is personal – you get to know these people when you work with them day in and day out. JJ do you think your experience in college as a psychology major has played into that at all? Or was it one of those things where you just kind of fell into this very personal model of how to run a business?
JJ Rosen
I do think that ended up having a pretty decent effect on me. At first when I started getting into computers after I spent so much money on college and was paying my student loans, I thought oh man what a waste I should have majored in computer science. But as you kind of get into the work world, I realized some of the classes that I took were actually pretty helpful. There were a couple classes I think would be good for anyone to take, no matter what their major is. I took a class on counseling and basically that’s part of it. As a graduate student, you were a guinea pig. I don’t know if that was totally ethical, but back then I guess it was fine for a graduate student. You were supposed to just think of any kind of you issue – it didn’t have to be a major trauma, just something to talk about and do a few sessions. They’d film it for the graduate student and at the same time, we had to each find someone to do counseling for. It was supposed to be light topics, so that was interesting.
In a lot of ways, counseling is about active listening and giving someone a way to know they are understood and facilitate them into thinking through whatever is the best way to solve whatever issue they’re working on. I just think that breaks through the mask a little bit. You know most of us could wear a little bit at work or in any kind of social environment. It’s okay to be vulnerable and you start realizing when you really start talking to someone – they have stuff going on in their life you don’t know about. I guess it gave me a respect for that.
One other class that was kind of interesting I took it was called small group behavior. You go into a room and there are chairs in a circle. There was a teacher and teaching assistant who are there with you. After about 20 minutes, someone asks what we’re supposed to do and the teaching assistant says, whatever you want. Basically, you observe how groups are formed and the interactions. I remember that was interesting because you could see how much the group you are in can affect how you feel. You kind of know that intuitively, but you really know when you’re observing it. With Atiba, I was thinking back to that class and how I want to have a place where yeah people feel comfortable, confident, and know they can say the wrong thing and no one will laugh at them. They can make mistakes and if they have a social faux pas, that’s okay. It’s how good friends would be. So yeah, a few of those classes affected me.
I read something about this general sort of everything’s personal vibe. A lot of people think it’s just business, it’s not personal was derived in the workplace. It actually originated from mobsters killing people. In the work world sometimes I’d hear, hey it’s not personal, it’s just business and I thought, well that’s not right. I thought we should just break that stereotype at Atiba.
Annakate Ross
Absolutely! On the topic of giving people the benefit of the doubt, I really like what you’re saying about how groups form and what makes people feel comfortable. Allowing them a space to feel vulnerable. I feel like that is also represented in all hiring practices. I’ve noticed just in the last year and a half, it seems like you’ll meet good people and bring them on even if you don’t quite have the right spot for them. Maybe they don’t fit cleanly into one of our existing roles and maybe we don’t need another person in this field right now, but we’re going to go ahead and bring them on because they seem like a great person and we’ll just kind of hope for the best and plug them in when we can. Could you speak a little bit into that thought process over the years?
JJ Rosen
A lot of these have just been after 30 years of lessons learned. You know what’s worked and what hasn’t in our own company as well as being a computer consultant. You get to see behind the scenes of thousands of other companies. You know what worked and what hasn’t. Of course, there’s no perfect or right way to manage a group or company – or even on hiring. You know there’s some subjectivity to it.
I’ll embarrass both of you guys for a moment. Annakate, we’ve known each other a long time. Even before we were working together, I knew when we started talking it wasn’t just an interview. We were just talking about your thinking on making a change and were interested in this area and you wanted to know what I thought. It was fun trying to figure out what you like to do and what the best bang for your buck was. Also, to know you were taking on a role you hadn’t done before so understanding skills you have and liked to use.
There are smart people who have a good work ethic, but then there’s just the intuitive gut feeling with people I can sense through a person’s enthusiasm. That alone can make me say I like them and will find a spot for them – and they’ll add value quickly.
A lot of the stuff we do is hard to learn but it’s learnable if you stick with it and get past the first few months. You just need the enthusiasm to keep going. I knew that about you long before you worked we worked together at Atiba. You are in the project management role now and like it – even though it wasn’t something you had done before. It worked out great!
Joey I think you were working at a wiring company or something.
Joey Baggott
Yeah, we made industrial shelving for warehouses offices.
JJ Rosen
So yeah, nothing to do with what you’re doing now in business development at a tech consulting company. Right off the bat, and probably anybody Joey who talks you, can tell your personality lends itself to sales. You give honest advice without being too salesy. I figured you would fit in perfectly – so that’s kind of how we’ve hired and it’s also fun for me because it makes things more personal. Glen was the first person I mentioned I hired. Glen was working at a tool shop at this factory in Columbia, Tennessee – so he was not doing computer stuff. He was just working in this factory and when I met him, he told me that he had been doing programming at night for fun just on his own. I remember it was kind of funny, he told me he bought a copy of C++, the programming language, at a flea market and started messing with it. I just thought that he’s pretty cool and a unique person. I was coding all the time myself and for a month I was showing him stuff – pretty soon he passed me up like. By week five he was a better coder than me and I was very glad we found him. He’s one of the better tech people I’ve ever seen. I also just liked his character all around. For me, hiring is based on personality, not just role skill set.
Annakate Ross
Yeah, I can see that which is neat. You look for a good person – somebody who shows the characteristics you’re talking about – enthusiasm and hunger to learn. This is something that you mentioned on The Bald Bearded Boss podcast recently.
JJ Rosen
Yes.
Annakate Ross
I thought that was really interesting because we are in technology and software development – there is a real challenge to hire developers right now. I hope I get this right, but you said something like, even if we don’t necessarily need someone with a particular technical skill set, because it can be so difficult to hire and there’s like a shortage, you will hire someone maybe and just even have them on the bench for a short time. That worked itself out for you from a business perspective – having people maybe you can’t plug into a client right away but just having the person as opposed to the reverse, where you have a need to fill but you can’t because you don’t have someone. I thought that was really interesting and also kind of speaks to looking for good people. Keeping the bench full even if there’s not a need right now is that did I get that right? That’s kind of how we built?
JJ Rosen
Yeah, so you know early on, like a lot of businesses – especially service businesses where you get a new project or new client and have to scramble If you’re overloaded to go hire someone. Sometimes, you have no choice, especially when you’re first starting. You can’t afford to hire ahead. As time has gone by and we’ve grown, we’ve been able to afford it. With the shortage of techies and almost anyone related to the tech world, if you come across someone who seems like they’d be really good – even if we don’t have the perfect need for them right now – we’re better off going ahead and getting them in the mix.
You don’t want to make a bad business decision financially, but the other part is, the .com days when a few of us were working 16 hours a day – as I got older I began to rethink that – especially when I had kids myself. It is not practical and shouldn’t be this way. Noo one should be under pressure to do that. Some of that has been about easing the load for the group, even if it does nothing but makes us a better place to work long term. All this for me has been about the long term. I hoped to have a place where it’s a little more personal. Where if someone wanted to, they could be here forever and know they are in a good place. Having flexibility and a way to do other things in life outside of work that are good for them.
Joey Baggott
I think that’s a really good point. We are going to wrap up this episode with this question. Atiba has been around for 30 years – it started 1992 and here we are in 2022. That’s a very long time for a company to exist and to do so well and continue to grow. What is going to make Atiba go another thirty years – to hit that sixty-year anniversary. I mean, other than me running the place once you retire. I mean what else do you think is going to drive Atiba to continue to be around and be relevant for thirty more years.
JJ Rosen
So I got on this thing you know when I got into doing a software development programming – there’s versions of software – you have version 1, then version 1.1 and version 2.0 and so on…
If you think about anything from Microsoft Word to Google you know you’ll see over time they have to reinvent themselves. In the next thirty years or even one step at a time, I’ve found the same thing. You have to keep tweaking, optimizing, and changing with the times and with what the demand is. With a shortage of techies, I don’t just think we’re building software, we’re building a company. Tweaking and optimizing it and being willing to change as we go. Here and there, just like software, we can have scope creep – usually because of me thinking, we can do this and that’ll be better next year. There’s always a healthy debate on what to tweak and what to keep the same. But anyway, hopefully continuing that long term will keep us around for the next thirty years.
Annakate Ross Awesome.
Joey Baggott
That is awesome and JJ, as someone who over the last few years I’ve gotten to know, I now consider you a friend. Thank you for being on here – I know this podcast is powered by Atiba but it’s great to hear your perspective and Annakate, thank you for everything you’ve added to it. You can sign us off from here Annakate.
Annakate Ross
Absolutely, awesome! Well JJ we are so glad to have you as our first guest on the podcast. Over the next few episodes, we’ll be interviewing other people from the Nashville Community. From the tech world and the business world – spanning a lot of different genres keeping with our half geek half human theme. We’re really looking forward to it. Thanks, everyone for joining us and thanks JJ! Thank you Joey and we’ll talk to you guys soon.
JJ Rosen
All right talk to you guys later.