Interviewing Daniel Howe:
Introduction
I interviewed Daniel Howe, a CSUMB alumni from cohort 7 (Spring 2018). He graduated in 2020 and is now the president of NeatMon, an agricultural tech company that provides monitoring tools for farmers. After reading an article from CSUMB about how he turned his capstone project into a real business, I chose to interview him. I found his journey impressive and wanted to learn more about how he did it. I was able to video call him for over 30 minutes.
Summary
Daniel worked in agricultural technology for nearly ten years as a product manager before deciding to pursue a more stable career for his family. While he was already working in tech, he lacked a deep understanding of programming concepts like data types, Big O notation, and AI. At CSUMB, he learned technical skills and how to think critically and problem-solve, which are essential.
His capstone project involved building a data visualization platform and a smart trash can device that alerted facilities when a bin was full. This project motivated him to work with the Institute for Innovation and Economic Development, where he participated in Startup Monterey Bay—a program that helps people turn ideas into real businesses based on market needs. However, launching a startup during COVID-19 was difficult because his potential customers were not operating normally.
Daniel highlighted that business, customer needs, and technology are the biggest challenges in his role. While using the latest tech is tempting, sometimes simpler solutions work better. He mentioned that many companies chase new technologies just to stay ahead, but most are not actually implementing AI—true AI requires a strong mathematical background and often a master’s degree in data science.
He also gave an interesting example about job security: in California, older programming languages like Pascal are still used in places like the DMV. Since these systems have not been updated, companies need engineers who know these older languages to maintain them, and this can be a stable and well-paying career path.
He emphasized the importance of learning to learn for success in the industry—picking up new skills quickly, building small projects, debugging efficiently, and taking breaks when stuck. He also stressed that writing efficient code and optimizing memory usage is crucial, especially in data-heavy applications like NeatMon, where clicking a button could return 300MB of data and cause an app to crash if not handled properly.
Reflection
One of the most interesting things Daniel said was his first question to me: Do you prefer working on long or short projects? I never thought about this before, but it made me realize that my preference could change my career path. Short-term projects fit web development and front-end work, while long-term projects align with application development or systems engineering. At the same time, being open to both short- and long-term projects could increase my chances of being hired in many industries.
His insights also made me reflect on the reality of the current industry. Many companies go for the latest trends, but only a few truly implement AI. Instead, it is essential to maintain existing systems, even old ones like those at the DMV, because they can be just as valuable. This showed me that being practical with technology, even sometimes working on the simplest thing, but getting it working well is more important than always trying to use the newest or most complex tool.
Future Steps
This interview made me realize the importance of learning efficiently, testing, and quickly implementing knowledge. I want to strengthen my skills in back-end technologies like TypeScript, React, and MongoDB while improving my ability to write optimized code for handling large data loads.
I also plan to explore long-term vs. short-term projects to see which fits better with me. I will focus on where I want to be in five years, whether in project management or application development. I will take Daniel’s advice to build small apps, test my knowledge, and challenge myself with different projects to find what fits me best.
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