Latest / You've Been Heard / 393- From Surgeon to IT Without Shortcuts w/Dr. Sergio E. Sanchez
Transcript
- 0:09Speaker A: Everyone out there listening, we have with us Dr. Sergio Sanchez. And when I say doctor, I'm not talking just like poor hungry doctor, I'm talking like real medical doctor that happens to be in it. So please tell me your story. Please tell me how you were a doctor that got into it. It's a great story.
- 0:31Speaker B: So first of all, hello everybody. Thank you for having me here, Phil. I'm honored to be part of this podcast, this episode. And yes, my story is a little bit out of the normal path. So since I was a little kid, I remember my mother asking me or my father, what do you want to do when you grow up? And I always says, I want to be a doctor. The intention for me to try to keep people healthy was my dream. So after high school, going to medical school in Mexico, then National University of Mexico and graduate after six years, of course, and then resident program, et cetera, et cetera. So I became a full fledged a general surgeon. Funny part here now, and I was probably between 13, 14 years old. And I have to go with my father, which he wasn't a doctor, was an architect. And I will tell you something funny about that too. But one time I have to go with him to the office and I think it was a Saturday, something like that. And I was bored out of my mind. Meanwhile, he was doing something, I think the assistant saw my face and says, Eli, are you bored? And I, yes, I just sit down here looking at my vat, typing things or no. And she says, well, can you come with me? I want to show you something that we just got for the office. Okay, So I want to sit down in front this weird TV which only ambar color and a keyboard that has different keys or more keys that my typewriter at home. And he start typing something and voila. I have first time a video game in front of me and was Spank Invaders and the computer was an Apple Iie. And in the moment that I touched the keyboard, I fall in love with that thing. So time passed and I was. I love to play video games. I love the computers, going to the arcades to put 25, seven and well, was great. But now I was able to get one and get it at home. And I say everything that I could. And finally I got Commodore 16, not the 64, the 16. Even previous to that one, 1 6.
- 3:06Speaker A: I wish we had kept all of our computers.
- 3:08Speaker B: Yes. So video games at that time was one in a blue moon. Not like today, that is a new one every day. So I start to get bored of playing the same game. And I start, well, how do you make a game? How is that a new program? So I started learning programming and basic, Fortran, Kobo, Pascal. So was just for hobby. A couple years passed and my father called me and says, hey, do you think you can put a network in the office? Because we just got a mainframe and some terminals. And to me that was like a Chinese, like a Greek. Like a what? Like. Yeah, take this book. And the book was a Nobel. I remember a red book of how to create a network. And was token read network with coaxial cable, weird connectors. And was somebody tripped and disconnect the cables. Everybody was down.
- 4:12Speaker A: By the way, not to interrupt your story, but what did you like more? The idea of being a doctor or being a nerd?
- 4:18Speaker B: I have to tell you, I miss being in an operation room. Yeah. But then I decided to fool myself and thinking that computers now they are my patients. I want to stay in my country. But okay, so coming to the United States, getting my green card in the beginning, my work permit, blah, blah, blah. And I start looking for a job in the medical field and all surprise. If you want to be a doctor here, you have to get a license to operate or prescribe medicines. Okay, no problem. How I get the license? Oh, you have to pass three tests, three exams, the board medical test exams, one per year. And after you pass those three, which for some reason I don't understand, over three years.
- 5:07Speaker A: So you have to take them over three years. You can't take them all at once.
- 5:10Speaker B: Exactly. I don't think that is still the same way. This happened 30 years ago. And I remember like asking why? Why cannot take the next one two weeks from now? No, no, no. The rule is you have to take one year in between. Okay. And then you accomplish passing the exams, you have to do resident again. In my case, J5, it's like going back to medical school. So broken heart. And at that moment I already started working like a medical assistant. And you need more to live in New York. So I start looking for options. And I thought, well, if I have to go back to school and again do something, I want to do something new. I don't want to get bored again doing anything medical. Plus the cost of going to medical school, plus the time, it was a little tough. So I took my bicycle, I rode all the way to Columbia University and I told them my problem. And at that moment they said, well, we can take your credits from medical school or apply to something else. And what else you like? I said, well, I like computers. I love the computer computer world. So great. We're opening a pilot program now like and you can be perfect for this.
- 6:40Speaker A: Perfect. What, what year was this?
- 6:43Speaker B: 1997.
- 6:46Speaker A: Okay, perfect. Your CFO doesn't want 47 Internet bills. We help IT teams consolidate multi location Internet into parent child billing with coterminous contracts with while still buying wholesale from the best providers. It gets control, finance gets clarity. No disruption, no sales pitch. Just go to you've been heard.com and answer the seven questions to simplify, streamline and save.
- 7:16Speaker B: And then I became a master in computer science by Columbia. My friend was with Philip Morris. So I worked for around two, three years in there. So I got a job in Albany. Albany, New York in a little studio. And at that time I was number 25. And they need somebody with computer knowledge because they didn't have a network. This studio was founded by two amazing guys that I love very much, Guha and Kartikvala. But at that time they were just kids coming from Rensselaer Tech school. And the school give them something that was called the incubator to help them to create basically a studio. I remember also very weird first meeting with human resources. I got the job and the lady told me perfect, can you start Monday? And I said, yes, of course. And then the next question was, can you bring your own computer? Oh, what do you mean my own computer? That yeah, we are pretty small. Everybody's bringing their computers from home to work, blah blah, blah. So from the technology point of view, I was like, oh my God, what? I just accept.
- 8:41Speaker A: Right, right, right.
- 8:42Speaker B: I says well okay, I'm here, I need a job. And meanwhile I found something different. I stayed in that place for 16 years.
- 8:52Speaker A: There we go.
- 8:53Speaker B: And the funny part, here it is, after two years, the biggest video game company in the world buzzed. So I work for Activision Blizzard with titles like Tony Hawk, Skylanders, Call of Duty, Guitar Hero. I don't know, I think like more than 50 games that my name's in the credits. So probably if somebody here likes video games, my name is in one of those. Nice time pass. And then I got, I mean, Warcraft.
- 9:24Speaker A: You guys had Warcraft?
- 9:26Speaker B: Yeah, there was wartime, incredible explosion for that game. Everybody love it. So after that, after working for 16 years in there, basically got laid off like always happen in the video game industry looking for a job. And because I was in charge to get all the computer system for that studio, which became 200 people at one time, I got in very good relationship with Apple, the business side of Apple because we were buying now tons of phones mostly for developing of video games. We're talking about 202008 around that time and one of my friends in Apple called me and says hey, we just hear in the news that Activision layup people are you affected by. And I said yes, sadly I am. And they says well do you want to work for Apple? Like are you now playing with my feelings? And absolutely yes, of course. And then I work for Apple with this title I ever have in my life. I was the senior lead genius for Apple which basically I was in charge of the genius bar, the technical team over there and I was great. But after a certain time I was still missing being a doctor and I got another offer with another company, a life science company called Eversana that they were related to research for pharmaceutical companies and hospitals and you know, clinics. So I worked for them, et cetera, et cetera. And time passed so I moved to Ohio and here I was in also a very similar job with a company which disappear from one day to another. That was kind of weird and scary when companies like a CDW or Dell or HP used to call me and say hey when is your company going to pay for these computers or these. So I don't know what you're talking about. Let me check with the CFO or the CEO. Yeah, yeah, I couldn't get in touch with them.
- 11:54Speaker A: Okay.
- 11:54Speaker B: So two weeks later we got a letter from lawyer saying thank you very much for your service. Your last day will be such and such and he will be your last payment. Like a what? So again looking for a job. I found a job working for the Catholic in the United States. Amazing people, incredible people. But completely different of every end user I have in my life. When I started working for the Catholic church my job was to unify six different provinces into one from the technology point of view. And you are talking about that the end user, average end user There is over 72 years old and they never use a computer or a phone, a smartphone for do their job in their lives. Their main tool is the interaction face to face. But when we are trying to bring technology to their world basically we have to have a lot of patience and teach them what and how to interact with not only the computers but also the system. I have very side stories from some of them that they were a hack or they were scam a very big amount of money because some of them they still using your AOL accounts like.
- 13:24Speaker A: Scammed, like your Nigerian letter type scam.
- 13:26Speaker B: Well now let me tell you something that is interesting when somebody tells you that hey, I have an AOL account out of the gate. If you think like a hacker now, you know so many things about that. Only with the email address you know that the person that have it is probably over 55 years old. That in 40 years that person hasn't changed to something newer like I don't know Gmail is because or he or she doesn't know how or don't care or both. So probably they are primary targets for all these people.
- 14:09Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So fast forward to today, you're back in healthcare and long story short, along the way you've Security is an issue. Security is clearly a passion of yours and and healthcare. Here's an interesting thing because healthcare is supposed to be ahead of the curve. Healthcare is supposed to be cutting edge, bleeding edge. All these different terms that we say right and it both is and it isn't right. Like healthcare technology from a machine standpoint, MRIs, X ray machines, these types of things I would say in America is fairly advanced and ahead of the curve robotics, things like that. But infrastructure, cybersecurity, end user unification, IT having a seat at the table and communicating clearly across the entire environment has something to be desired in the healthcare world. One because it's very political and it's very. Healthcare in general is very departmentalized and good IT leadership really can't be IT aside from the business, it can't be deep, it can't be compartmentalized like this because it affects all of the business and all the communications. So that's a problem in the healthcare world. And then when you layer insecurity on top of it, with many buildings being just old and cabling issues and antiquated technology having to integrate with the new up to date machines and technology, you have this perfect storm. And then getting anything approved and done has to go through this crazy political process and getting all doctors into a room or board members to make a decision is not a timely thing. How do you deal with all that?
- 15:54Speaker B: Well, you big parks for is our own fault. I believe that we people in the IT world speak a different language. And I'm not meaning English or Spanish or Italian or French. I'm talking about that we have a very complicated way to communicate technology because we think that the people understand that everybody knows about what is a DNS or what mean URL or things like that. And sadly that start to divide people, divide people to the point that some people that are the main deciders for getting a service or hardware or software is People that sign the check to buy the things, but they don't have idea about technology so they don't know what they are buying or they get scared for what they hear in the news. And oh no, I hear that you put something in the cloud, everybody see it, that you don't have control of things like that. So our job in the IT world is also translate to a basic terms that information to everybody. One of the things that I believe is no matter how much money you invest in cybersecurity, example you can spend thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars, take one person to click the wrong link and all that money goes out the window. So the approach that I will take always with technology is to try to explain in the most basic way to everybody. In that way they completely understand what is in stake, what is the problem, not having that resource or what happen if we get what is the advantage and disadvantage of having that.
- 18:06Speaker A: I think people are pretty open to that in healthcare because there's such a high, at least higher level healthcare people because they're so knowledgeable of their own field that they appreciate knowledge from another field. And something that seems really basic to us, they're actually fairly thankful for.
- 18:24Speaker B: Yes.
- 18:25Speaker A: Whereas in other industries a lot of times high level executives are very knowledgeable of technology and that can be dangerous.
- 18:32Speaker B: That can be too. Because how many of us people in the IT world discover somebody that think that know better than us and actually they make things even worse. That is the scary and dangerous thing there.
- 18:48Speaker A: So if you had a. A playbook for creating a three steps, five steps for communicating to the board structure in healthcare or creating a an IT playbook in the healthcare industry. What are those three steps?
- 19:07Speaker B: I will tell you. First and most will be communication and learn to speak the same language. It's important that step number one have the best communication between everybody. The teams, the board, the clinicians, the finance. Let's speak the same way. That way we know exactly and faster what we need to fix or to get number one. Number two is be sure of your cybersecurity or your security in general. You need to be sure that everything coming to your network is secure up to date, that you have very good loan. Loan. I will not call it passwords anymore. I want to passphrases. I want that you write something like your memories, right. If you can do that, it will save you a lot of headaches. So that will be communication, be sure of security. And the third will be basically be sure that everybody is in the same page with you and Be up to date in everything that is out there. Today we have something that is amazing and terrifying at the same time. It's called AI and is being bombarded to you everywhere. You open any Microsoft product and Copilot is right there. You open your Chrome browser and EMLI is right there. Basically, it's in your face. So we need to really, really, really learn it if we want to continue be in the top. But also you have to be careful. What are we teaching AI who has access to that information? We need to be sure that everything is connected and correct. So that is what I will be doing.
- 21:11Speaker A: Is there something that being an still a surgeon, still a doctor. I was going to say that the. Is there something that most IT leaders get wrong that you think is obvious?
- 21:26Speaker B: Yes. We assume that everybody had say knowledge that we do. It's funny sometimes.
- 21:32Speaker A: Or that people care what we're talking about.
- 21:35Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, but we. How many again held the esteem? How many times they go overthinking the problem of a user? A the computer is not working. A the computer is not. And really it's because the power is not connected or they never press the button or they are confusing the CPU with the monitor. You know how many people they call the cpu? Oh, this is my computer, is my monitor. They don't think about the little square thing in the desk.
- 22:08Speaker A: It's amazing. If you could fix one big. If you could fix the biggest challenge in your life in it, the biggest challenge that you have in IT leadership right now, if you could fix that across the board for everybody, what would it be?
- 22:20Speaker B: So basically I think our job is always resolving problems and always will be problems out there and technology every day something new. So with that new device, new service, new system, new software, problems will come with and problems that sometimes the end user like us will make the mistake of doing something wrong or sometimes it's something that we are not prepared to put in our network and with.
- 22:56Speaker A: That is a good point. Do you think that we create more problems for ourselves inadvertently than we need or should we be preventing more challenges and problems than we are fixing?
- 23:13Speaker B: This is interesting to know. I mean, problems will be always there because it's in our human nature. But yesterday I was actually hearing a podcast, also very, very good podcast about cyber security, where basically they tell you that you have to update all your software continuously because they found problem. They have bugs, they have places where hackers can get in. And you might like why we have programs Today, in the 21st century, in the 2025, we're still writing programs that has issues. Why we still doing that? I mean when you buy a car you don't go back to the dealer every week to update your tires or update your.
- 24:06Speaker A: No, but I can tell you that there is a warranty on that car for a reason. Because they know that thing is going to break down after a hundred thousand miles. I mean I can answer that question. That is easy. It's to make money. I mean even like I think Chris Rock years ago said what you don't think they can't make a Chrysler with a. Or a cat Cadillac where the bumper doesn't fall off? And like of course he's like we made ships that supposedly go to the moon. They can't make a car.
- 24:32Speaker B: You know, say it's like, it's like.
- 24:35Speaker A: A double edged, I don't know, whatever we want to call that metaphor. But yeah, we could make things that don't probably break or we could make things more perfect. We could do things better. Yeah. What can we force in from a technology leader stand ship standpoint to create a higher level of accountability our around quality control and security. How do we hold vendors more accountable? How do we hold our C level leadership accountable to their vision and goals in place without derailing them through AI hype cycles? All of that like how does it hold people accountable to just being better.
- 25:20Speaker B: Is tough because again we are talking about humans here. Maybe with AI that we.
- 25:27Speaker A: That's why we're eliminating humans.
- 25:30Speaker B: But I think one of the reasons that we need to have here is when you sign a contract with a company, you have the famous SLAs. You need to be sure that everything that is written down in that SLA is basically follow to the top.
- 25:49Speaker A: You need to be me. Having negotiated many, many contracts over the years, SLAs are worth almost nothing because we're talking about a percentage of downtime shared amongst thousands of customers over a large geographical area. So anyone that's not five nines or it's like hey we're four nines plus. It's kind of a. Everyone in the industry knows that SLAs are kind of like what you want is like chronic outage addendums. What you want are things that are spelled out very specifically for you individually as a customer.
- 26:25Speaker B: Yeah, actually. But take all the promises of the vendors like really, really serious. Be sure that they are compliant with that.
- 26:38Speaker A: I think this is a good brainstorming session because I would like to create an app. Greg, my AI app creator. I would like to create an app that holds all your vendors accountable and reminds you to have quarterly check ins, whatever it is. Because how many vendors do you have that follow through? Kind of have them, but like they're there, right? It's like they're just there. Do they. Are they really earning their paycheck or. I was having a brainstorming session this morning too. I was like, I just want to make it boring again. Let's make it boring again. Where we don't have to worry about like 50% of the standard stuff. Like, we shouldn't have to worry about. There shouldn't be friction points with Internet, there shouldn't be friction points with telecom, there shouldn't be friction points with firewall upgrades. All of this stuff is kind of like the standardization. It should be boring. Let's make it boring again in those, those situations. And you shouldn't have to deal with it as an IT director. So there's that standpoint and then there's the, yeah, it should be. Should be done for you. You shouldn't really have to be like wasting a lot of time on that. And you shouldn't have to be, I don't know, ringing people up and like, hey, why do I, why didn't you catch that? I don't need these 15 extra licenses that are doubled up with whatever, if that's to your point. And then as far as the SLAs go, yeah, people should be proactive.
- 28:05Speaker B: I don't.
- 28:06Speaker A: People shouldn't have to call when their Internet's down. The provider should actually already know that and should be proactively calling you and be like, we noticed that circuit's hopping. We notice. Is that just so you know, we're on top of it versus 1-800-go- pound sand.
- 28:21Speaker B: Well, again, you know, now they have a new tool, more or less new tool called AI that can do that job for then and automatically get the information out to the people.
- 28:35Speaker A: I mean, we've had it for years. It's just a matter of like, which people are mediocre. And actually it's kind of like your disaster avoidance plan, right? Like is as good as if you don't just unplug everything and test it every now and then. Like, oh, well, correct. It's like, how often do people's backups, can they actually retrieve and are they, are they done? Well, because we haven't. There's just so many gold standards checklists that we have to have in it.
- 28:59Speaker B: And how many, you know, time you check that the backup is working and you can deploy it back again. And how long will take.
- 29:07Speaker A: And so to your point, that's something that AI I think could really, would really be able to help the IT world out in reminders, double checking, scanning, almost like this. What's a technical term that we could use? There's got, oh, dynamic. We need to say we want a dynamic, some sort of like dynamic scanning tool that's across. It's going to make it boring again. Okay, so then 18 months from now, I want your prediction 18 months from now, what are we going to be talking about? What are we going to be talking about that no one's talking about today?
- 29:42Speaker B: I think in 18 months from now we will have generative AI. You will have now AI doing things, things without intervention of us.
- 29:53Speaker A: Some examples we want. What's the biggest one that people are going to be shocked like, nah, it's not really going to take over this job.
- 29:59Speaker B: Basically everything that is a repetitive task job that is probably going away. I'm so sorry about my friends from the coding war, all the programmers.
- 30:11Speaker A: I'm with you. They're done. They're done. Yeah, there's going to be a couple high level guys left over, but there's going to be a huge gap and I don't know what we're going to do there. Where's the gap?
- 30:22Speaker B: Well, I have to tell you, everybody that is a programmer today, they will become botfi hunters. Basically they will be checking if the code given by the AI is correct. Basically they will be just reading it.
- 30:40Speaker A: Even that's going to be eliminated because. Because I've seen a massive jump and I'm talking literally in weeks. Yeah, we literally had one day. It was like, this is really close, we can do it. But there's a lot of hallucinations and issues and problems to the next week. It's solving itself, it's fixing its own problems. It's amazing. There's no hallucinations. Literally two months ago we could not make an infographic without spelling mistakes. Tech, like text on an infographic. Very, very difficult thing of the past overnight.
- 31:16Speaker B: Well, you remember the pictures with people with six fingers or two hands.
- 31:22Speaker A: That might still be happening.
- 31:23Speaker B: I don't know.
- 31:23Speaker A: Yeah, that might still be happening. Here's what I'm thinking that goes in conjunction with that is are we going to get dumb? Because if all the coders, if all the modern day coders are kind of laid to rest, so to speak, where's the cutting age or where's the new age or where's the inventative minds going to come into place. And it's kind of like you grew up with the Internet. You used the Commodore 16.
- 31:51Speaker B: Right.
- 31:52Speaker A: You know, kind of you have a better idea of what a computer is, where it came from. You have a better idea of how the Internet works. You have an understanding of networks from the beginning. Whereas my son the iPhone was around since he's been born. Yeah. There's going to be this massive gap. So how are we going to make strides in new is there's going to be this big gap in the 1 percenters are going to be a lot higher that the 1 percenters being that people that are actual geniuses and smart and still take the time to learn, create coding and understand all this can create new gaps. Or is it this is just my primitive mind.
- 32:32Speaker B: I will tell you this from the medical point of view. It's already known by some and I can send you the studies. I think is Stanford University did a study about how many hours average per day kid is in front of a screen.
- 32:53Speaker A: Yeah.
- 32:54Speaker B: And I think from 8 years old, which is pretty young to 17 years old, the hobo is 7.5 hours per day. Basically kind of like a job. But also they are noticed that kids are having issues with the development of the pre cortex part of the brain, which is basically the director of the orchestra. So they discovered that is thinner that normal. And I would say normal a kid that don't use ice cream all the time. And it's like they are getting older. And I don't say it's older from a good point of view, but from a bad point of view because they're the size, the physical size of the pre cortex is thinner. So the way that technology is working on them is affecting basically is a change in their brains also. And then everybody knows this. The blue light coming from a screen will also diminish the production of melatonin, which is basically the hormone that help you to sleep. Yeah, yeah. So they are having also issues with that will a lack of sleep which is very, very important for mental health. If you don't sleep when you are that age around 8 to 10 hours per day, you start to get depression. So and we are seeing that in kids actually since 2008 when the iPhone came out, the depression in teenagers has increased a lot. So are we going to be a different human being in the future for all is kids now? Your kids and you and me, Phil, we grow up with electric light and everybody at home we have a switch. How many people can explain how a switch work of our generation? So they don't know how to work. But they know that if they're turned on, you have light. Turn off, you don't have light. The same way with the kids today. You put it very, very well, thinking like they are growing up now with Internet like everyday normal thing. The kids born today, they are going to be growing with AI, will be part of their lives and they will don't care how it works, but it's working.
- 35:38Speaker A: That's pretty wild.
- 35:40Speaker B: So think about that. Basically 18 months from now, the changes I think will be explosive. In the 1800s in England, you have the creation of the steam engine and that changed the face of the entire planet. In a couple years, probably 10 years, everything was different. Today with the creation of AI will be questions of months. You can see a graphic of how technology is advancing from 1940s. Let's think about Alan Turing, the Enigma machine. It was a very, very. The angle of. If you see a graphic, the angle will be almost Nothing. Until the 1970s that start to be a higher slope and today it's completely vertical. You can go to a website called Hugging Face, which is kind of like a app store. And every day is a couple of new applications because they're using AI to make AI.
- 36:53Speaker A: What's the learning journey that we should suggest for the youth growing up? Is it Python? Understanding data science? Is it history, Technology? Obviously I'm talking from our professional standpoint, technology, history along with AI, applied AI, data science and Python. And how do we kind of close that gap between the knowledge and people? Yeah, I mean there's like real. Because I have friends that are like PhDs in data science and stuff that applied at Facebook and stuff like this. And it was interesting, their interview process, some of the interview process was like, sit in this room, you've got 24 hours to solve this problem this way. And just didn't get the job because then a group of nerds come in and pick it apart and they're like, yeah, you're not thinking the right way.
- 37:48Speaker B: This is not it.
- 37:50Speaker A: So we've got a level of people that are really, really smart on the verge of controlling the entire world. I do believe that the people that control this have an immense amount of power, an immense amount of data on human psychology, on how to control us. With all that being said, how do you survive in that world? So you've got to kind of learn it. So it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. If there was one message that you could get across to C level executive leadership and all the leaders and all the people in the world that don't understand the language of it. What would that message be?
- 38:29Speaker B: That please allow us, the people in IT to explaining to whatever level they need all the information that is needed to grow up like a company. That allowed us to show them what is coming, basically to keep open communication. That not because you find technology complicated or confused. Hate technology. We can level the knowledge to everybody, and that will help everybody. I believe some people think that technology is kind of like an enemy, a nemesis. It's not. It's just a tool. But we need to learn how to handle that tool. You give a hammer to a carpenter, and it's going to make a beautiful table for you. You give that hammer to a serial killer. Yep.
- 39:27Speaker A: That's an interesting metaphor. It's been a pleasure having you on the show, Dr. Sergio Sanchez. You've been heard.
- 39:34Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you, Phil. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.
- 39:39Speaker A: All righty, sir.