From Telecom Hardware to Cloud: Taft Singletary’s Tech Career Journey | Ep030

Episode Information Show Notes In this episode, Manuel Martinez interviews Taft Singletary, a Senior Technical Account Manager with three decades of experience in telecommunications and technology. Taft shares his path from growing up in North Philadelphia to becoming a respected cloud professional. Starting with his education at DeVry University and early career at RAM Mobile Data, Taft worked on cutting-edge technology including the first prototypes of BlackBerry devices and Palm Pilots. He details his progression through roles at Cox Communications, Comcast, Scientific Atlanta (now Cisco), and beyond, sharing honest reflections on career transitions and leadership challenges. Throughout the conversation, Taft offers practical career advice: surround yourself with high achievers, build meaningful professional relationships, and take strategic control of your career path. His story highlights how combining technical expertise with people skills creates opportunities in the rapidly changing technology landscape. This episode provides valuable insights for technology professionals at any stage looking to grow their careers and navigate industry evolution successfully. #CareerDownloads #TechCareers #CloudComputing #Telecommunications #ProfessionalDevelopment #MentorshipMatters 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 background and their experiences, to try and uncover any actionable advice that you can use as you’re managing your own career. So for today’s episode, I have with me a coworker. His name is Taft Singletary and his background is in communications and telecom. So we did have a brief conversation when we first started working together and he kind of mentioned some of his background, I shared some of mine, and I thought it was a really interesting kind of how he ended up moving in here and some of the experiences and his expertise. So I figured I would bring him on and just really kind of dig in a little bit deeper and share that story with the rest of you. So I will go ahead and introduce Taft. So thanks Taft, I appreciate you coming on and being open and willing to share your experiences. Taft: I appreciate it, man. Thanks for inviting me. My first time on a podcast, but I do appreciate the mission that you’re trying to accomplish and yeah, can’t wait to share. Just my, you know, everything that I’ve done and hopefully it’ll help others. And again, hopefully it’ll just maybe motivate others to maybe look more into tech, follow their passions, things of that nature. Manuel: So if you don’t mind just kind of to start off, just give me a brief summary of kind of what your current role or position is and then just some of the roles and responsibilities of what you are in charge of today. Taft: Yeah, so I’m a senior technical account manager. I have multiple customers and my job is really to just help them maximize their cloud, their complex cloud journey. And they’re all in different phases of their cloud journey. Some are recently starting, some are just well-advanced. And my job is to really help them excel at operational components, their usage, their cost, seeing around corners for them from a security perspective, really just being a technical consultant for them and just making sure that they are maximizing, I’m gonna say their cloud investments. And that’s ultimately what my job is. Manuel: If you can now kind of give us a brief summary of kind of where you grew up and kind of what eventually got you interested in technology, so everybody’s different. Some people early on, some people later in life, but just kind of what sparked that eventual interest and that want to kind of pursue that area. Taft: Yeah, so I grew up in Philadelphia, a very poor section of Philadelphia, North Philadelphia. And we didn’t have a lot. And this is, I’m a little older now, so this is 80s time period. So internet hasn’t really jumped off yet. And there’s really only certain things that you can get into from a technology perspective. And for me, it was movies. It was, I was very attracted to movies like Star Wars and the old series Star Trek and all these things. And it was just, hey, being able to beam somebody onto a planet and just the Star Wars is all this electronics and it was just great. I just, I really just love that. But at the time, like I said, there wasn’t… you had some computers, Commodore computers and kind of basic stuff. You had Atari systems. Everything was kind of really basic, but I was into all of those things. To the point where my mom just left me alone. I would get on my Atari, kind of like the kids do today. But I was just into technology, walkie talkies, anything that had any sort of, to me, tech. I just was like focused intently on it. So I graduated high school and I was actually going to go into Air Force and that’s a total another story. I got talked out of it. But there was a recruiter for DeVry University. And at the time, DeVry University had a telecommunications management program. And I was really interested in it. It encompassed computers. At the time, telephone was really the, the telecommunications medium. But it was electronic engineering. So we put together circuit boards. It was pretty much everything. And it was low cost. Because again, I came from, my parents couldn’t afford to send me to, I’m going to say like a regular college. But more importantly, a lot of regular colleges didn’t have that broad of a program. It was really computer programming. And this one was computer programming and everything else like I mentioned. So I decided I’m going to go there. And I ended up going off to DeVry. Got a bachelor degree in telecommunications. And again, I was able to really chart my career. And it was early on. And so I could go into computer programming or I can go into just pure electronic engineering. Or if I wanted to stay in telecommunications, I can get into the telephone side. And there was plenty of telephone companies out there that were looking for engineers to do, just basic communications sort of things. So that’s where I got started. And then when I graduated, I ended up moving back to Philadelphia with my uncle. And you’ll find my uncle come up a lot. He was the one that, he was pretty successful, but more in a traditional, he was like an accountant. But he pushed me hard to excel. Like I would come home with D’s and he would literally like just go crazy. I’m like, what are you doing? You have to get A’s, you don’t understand it. And now I get what he was saying. Like again, at the time as a young black male, I didn’t understand him, but he’s trying to tell me you have to be excellent. You can’t be just good, you have to be excellent. So again, you’ll find out he’ll probably come up a lot in our conversation, but he really didn’t want me to go off and do computers. He thought that was too edgy too this. So I kind of bucked the trend with him and said, no, no, no, I’m gonna go do this. Cause that’s just where I wanted to be. So I graduate, I’m back living with him. I mean my mom and dad in North Philly, but I didn’t want to go back to the hood hood. So I’m with him. (both laughing) And I was literally about to start work at a Radio Shack. I had got a job offer at a Radio Shack and I get a call from RAM Mobile Data. So RAM Mobile Data, they did a national packet switching network that included wireless. And it was really kind of the first kind of two way radio type of communication that included data. You had telephone, but actual data. And so they offered me a position. It was for $29,000 a year. I thought it was like the best thing ever. (both laughing) And so I’m in Philadelphia, I moved to North Jersey cause that’s where they were based at. And I was a lab engineer in which allowed me to start from the ground up. So I was building equipment, I was upgrading, we call them cell towers and cell switches, upgrading cell switches, doing packet analysis, all these different things that I thought was just the coolest thing possible. It was amazing. Manuel: So, and you mentioned like when you were in college, you’re getting exposure to like, it sounds like a number of different things. So was communications, after you graduated and you mentioned Radio Shack and eventually this company called you, were you, was communications the area that kind of called your attention more? And were you like putting in applications everywhere? Was this, what was that process for you kind of moving out and saying, okay, this is where I think I wanna go. Like I get you pick technology, but what made you decide communications and apply in that realm? Taft: That’s a good question. So at DeVry, one of the things they have you do is before you get your bachelor’s degree, you have to do an internship somewhere. And in Jersey, they only offered an associate degree. So you had to move to one of four locations to actually get a bachelor’s degree. So DeVry University had locations in multiple cities. I chose Kansas City. So I actually moved out to Kansas City for my final two years. And my internship happened to be with Sprint, which was based in Kansas City. So my internship, we would wire, they would send us telephone jobs and we would actually wire, let’s say like an office building with telephone. It was all telephony wired, went down to like a PBX switch. And it was all voice, but it was all communications. And that started getting me into a twisted pair and punching down and dialing, making sure that, okay, this is working, testing it. And so that was really what kind of sparked my interest in, man, I like to focus on the communication side. Because again, I could have did computer ...