From the 80s to AI: Career Lessons from 40 Years in Tech - Tanium Tech Talks #127

With over 40 years of experience, from programming on a Commodore VIC-20 to working on cutting-edge AI integrations, Ashley McGlone shares a practical framework for thriving in a constantly evolving tech landscape.

This episode goes beyond tools and trends, offering real-world strategies for navigating change, building your brand, and choosing the right opportunities, whether you’re just starting out or looking to reinvent your path.

Join Ashley for a whiteboard-style mentoring session filled with career wisdom, hands-on examples, and a few nostalgic nods to the early days of computing. Whether you’re a junior developer or a seasoned architect, you’ll walk away with actionable insights—and maybe a few laughs.

Key takeaways

• Technology careers follow a cycle of continuous learning: Ashley describes a pattern of learning, supporting, upgrading, and eventually moving on from each new thing, forming the foundation of a sustainable tech career.
• Big new things vs. little new things: Disruptive technologies like AI or quantum computing create waves of innovation. In their wake, smaller tools, frameworks, and vendors emerge to support and implement these broader shifts.

Big new things are disruptive, and they open amazing opportunities for the little new things.

• Modes are timeless—pick yours wisely: Whether you’re a builder, seller, trainer, or operator, your “mode” defines how you engage with technology. These roles don’t change, even as the tech does.
• Security careers thrive in the lag between innovation and regulation: New tech often lacks mature security practices. That gap is a goldmine for cybersecurity professionals.

You want a career in cybersecurity or technology security? Just look at any one of these new things when they break and just pursue the security angle of it.

• Chain your new things to avoid career stagnation: Don’t get stuck on a single technology. Instead, build a career path by chaining together new things that excite you and solve real problems.
• Personal branding is your career accelerator: Blogging, speaking, or sharing your journey online can set you apart in a crowded job market.

What if you build a public persona as the answer person? That can turbo your career.

• Mentorship is a two-way street: Juniors bring fresh knowledge of new tech. Seniors bring wisdom and context. Together, they can build better solutions—and better careers.
• Your niche is the intersection of new tech, your role, your industry, and your brand: Ashley offers a formula for creating a standout career niche by choosing your new thing, your mode, your vertical, and your branding method, then combining them into a career path that’s uniquely yours.
• Tanium is helping shape the future of autonomous endpoint management: Ashley highlights how Tanium’s original vision—endpoints that are self-healing and self-governing—is becoming a reality through agentic AI and integrations with platforms like Microsoft and ServiceNow.

We’re really investing in this AI space with autonomous endpoint management… and to see some of this kind of stuff come around is, it actually is rather amazing.

Additional resources

• How AI for automation will revolutionize today’s IT workflows
• How Tanium AEM for ServiceNow transforms the enterprise
• Tanium develops new AI agent integration with Microsoft Security Copilot
• Tanium careers