From Coder to Solar Innovation: A Tech Career Journey with Darius Roberts | Ep019

Episode Information Show Notes In this engaging episode of Career Downloads, host Manuel Martinez sits down with Darius Roberts, CEO of UpliftSolar, to explore the fascinating intersection of software development, entrepreneurship, and solar technology innovation. About Our Guest: Darius Roberts leads multiple ventures in the solar technology space, including UpliftSolar.com, which is developing innovative solutions to expand solar panel accessibility. He also runs the Las Vegas Robotics Meetup (lvrobotics.org), bringing together industry leaders and local innovators in the robotics field. Episode Highlights: Early career insights and the value of taking calculated risks in your twenties How an unconventional aptitude test shaped crucial career decisions Transitioning from developer to technical lead to entrepreneur The story behind his early car-sharing startup (a precursor to modern services) Why Las Vegas is becoming an epicenter for robotics innovation The growing importance of AI literacy in tech careers Building and managing technical teams effectively Navigating the challenges of hardware vs. software startups Finding and working with the right mentors Key Takeaways: Understanding your strengths and working style is crucial for career success The value of being geographically flexible early in your career How to approach problem-solving across different industries The importance of balancing technical skills with business acumen Connect with Darius: UpliftSolar: [website] Las Vegas Robotics Meetup: lvrobotics.org #CareerDownloads #TechCareers #StartupLife #SolarTechnology #Innovation Follow Career Downloads: Website: https://careerdownloads.com YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@careerdownloads X/Twitter https://twitter.com/@careerdownloads TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@careerdownloads LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/career-downloads Instagram https://www.instagram.com/careerdownloads FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/people/Career-Downloads/61561144531249 Join us next week for another insightful conversation about navigating the evolving world of technology careers. Transcription Manuel: Welcome everyone, my name is Manuel Martinez and this is another episode of Career Downloads where each episode I basically hit the refresh button, bring on a different guest to learn more about their career, different ways that they’ve managed it, how they’ve moved around, what ultimately led them to take different decisions with the ultimate goal to really help you understand and learn from others so that you can pick up different techniques and tips to manage your own career along the way. So with that for today’s episode, I have with me Darius Roberts and he is an entrepreneur, so he started his own business, but he also has kind of started one early on in his career. He’s also been a developer, he’s moved up into development lead roles. So with that, I’d like to welcome Darius. Darius: Thank you, Manny. Manuel: No problem. Thanks for coming along. I appreciate you coming on to kind of share some of your expertise and even just your experiences along the way. Darius: I’m excited to share my thoughts on how to know yourself, AI and ergonomics. Manuel: Awesome. And with that, what I’d like to do is if you could just do just a quick summary of kind of what your role is now and kind of some of those responsibilities and then we’ll kind of work backwards up to that point. Darius: Great. I’m in two different companies. One is my technology company, so I’m the CEO. It’s a new technology that will enable solar panels to be in more places. And that’s a subject for a whole different podcast, but UpliftSolar.com is our website and we are currently trying to put some pilot projects together. Separately, we have a more traditional looking solar company where we put solar panels on roofs. But from a technology standpoint, it’s also very interesting because how do you manage 20 employees with a software back-end? We’re doing some things differently than other solar companies do, so we had to make our own back-end to support our own processes. So I’m managing that project and also have my hands in the code. And then separately, I run the local Las Vegas robotics meetup, so lvrobotics.org. Check it out and come to some of our meetups. We have 40 to 70 members show up and we bring in business people, executives in robotics who have been successful across the country, and internationally actually, to come in and share with our local roboticists. Number one, what’s the cutting edge? Where is the cutting edge of robotics? And number two, how can you get involved? Because Las Vegas is the epicenter of a lot of really interesting robotics initiatives. Pilot projects. So maybe the programming happens in California, but everybody wants to come here to the big leagues. Manuel: That’s awesome. That’s very interesting. And I know that you and me have talked about that a little bit separately, and it’s something that I just haven’t had the time yet, but I did look them up and kind of see some of the things that you were doing. And it is very interesting and, you know, it sounds like a lot of opportunity to meet people and work on some cutting edge technology. So now if you just kind of briefly tell me kind of where you grew up, a little bit about your background, and then eventually kind of what got you either interested in technology or got you started down that path. Darius: Great. Well, I’ve always been interested in tech. Like when I was in high school was the late 90s, you know, everything was frothy from 97 to the burst of the first tech bubble. And so I remember thinking at the time, what am I doing here in Oklahoma, right? I, you know, I’m about to go to college. I’m excited about going to college, but I had this nagging doubt like, I know where the real action is. And so that didn’t directly inform it, but over time I just developed this sense that you’ve only got one life and you need to go out and you need to find something big to work on. I can work on technology projects and hone my skills, but unless I have, you know, some some sort of semblance of like, how big do I want? What is big? What does that even mean? I don’t know what skills I need to hone. So I went to college, I then decided to start a startup, but I went to grad school while I was starting that startup. So it was, it was very much keep the day job orval. And you know, started my startup, my research advisor was very supportive of it. It was in the same field as my grad school, didn’t work out. And that’s a lesson I’m happy to share with, with younger people getting into the field today, which is there’s a huge luck component to this. And you know, there’s, there’s things you can minimize that, but ultimately you just got to go out and swing for the fences and you’re not going to hit it on your first one. And if you do, great. Manuel: Well, and you bring up a good point, right? Is earlier on, you know, you’re not going to hit that, that home run. Darius: There is a component of luck, but I think the more opportunities you chase, the more that you kind of put yourself out there, the more that you’re doing, the more opportunities you’re giving yourself to get lucky. And even when you fail, people who are investors, so I come at this from the mindset of everyone should be, if not a startup entrepreneur, at least thinking about, you know, where technology is going, because there’s a lot of, you know, you need to be able to understand what’s happening around you. So if you fail, investors in the future will not see that as a negative. So I think that’s a lot of insecurity that young people, even technologists, feel like if they put their selves out there, put themselves out there, and they don’t succeed, well, that was their shot. That’s not your shot. That’s, that’s anti. That’s, you know, that’s showing an investor that you are willing to take their money and run and try and do something amazing with it, even if you fail. So. Manuel: Yeah, no, and that makes sense. And I’ve, who was it, I want to say that it might be Bezos and I’ve read a couple of different books, but, you know, their big thing is fail fast, fail often, right? So, it’s okay to fail. Don’t take 10 years to do it. If you’re going to go through, take that opportunity, fail, fail fastly and say, okay, what did I learn from it? What can I do better for the next one? Darius: And not, not just you personally learn, but like, what did you test in the market that is now a secret inside your organization that you guys know this thing over here definitely won’t work? We’ll let everybody else do that. Manuel: Oh, yeah. I didn’t think about it that way. So even if you’re not doing it as an entrepreneur, you can do it as somebody working for an organization like, hey, I want to test this. I want to try that. And even within your organization, they’ll see that you have that ability to try things and they’re more willing to, you know, apt and say, hey, we’ve tried this, it didn’t work and, you know, document that somewhere. Cool. And, you know, so as you’re kind of going through and, you know, you went to college, is there anything else that kind of made you decide what avenu...