TMT Insights: A Day in the Life Series, Part 3

The third edition in TMT Insights’ “A Day in the Life” series highlighting the skills needed for success in Media & Entertainment (M&E) focuses on Michael “Gilly” Gilbert, Lead Backend Engineer at TMT Insights. Gilly shares his insights on how being a “lifelong tinkerer” started him on his career path, the importance of first principles, and the career advice he’d give to his younger self.

Describe your current role and how you got started in software development.

I’ve been an engineer for more than 13 years now, starting at Bloomberg News in 2011. In 2023, I took a formal step into media supply chain when I moved on to TMT Insights. At TMT, I began developing backend systems and the integrations required to support content distribution and media processing tasks, including launching edit and compliance workflows, all orchestrated by our operational management platform, Polaris.

Now, two years later, it’s hard to define my “average week.” On any given project my role can include building infrastructure to integrating third-party services to creating delivery pipelines. A good way to describe it is “equal parts working with clients and understanding their needs and then helping coach and lead our Polaris development teams as we continue to enhance features and functionality within the platform.”

Have you always had your sights set on software engineering?

No, I started school as a business major, mainly because everyone was doing that. I stuck with it for a year and absolutely hated it. I never went back to college for a degree right after that. Fast forward to now, I’m about to graduate with a B.S. in Computer Science from CSUF this May. On top of that, I’m starting my M.S. in Software Engineering at CSUF this September.

As a lifelong tinkerer, I’ve always liked tearing things apart and rebuilding them. My curiosity, passion, and hands-on experience have taken me a long way. I’d look at the clock and try to understand what made it tick. The technology I grew up with in the 90s allowed me to explore controlling and manipulating virtual environments and systems. Backend engineering came naturally to me and seemed like a logical career path to pursue. I stumbled upon programming and realized I can make a computer do what I want simply because I told it to. Some people like going on hikes. I like sitting in front of my computer and building projects for fun.

Have the skills required to excel in your current position changed or expanded since you first started in this role?

In this field, especially early in your career, you don't really always understand what you're building. You're often just doing what you're told. Coding is coding at some point. It’s writing instructions on a computer. Now that doesn't make sense to everyone and there are different languages involved, but the ideas flow the same between any language.

You absolutely have to stay coachable. It's hard to go through an ego death, but you have to put ego aside to be a great engineer. That's what separates good engineers from great engineers: the willingness to work hard and continually learn. If I train in a sport and perform poorly compared to others, I have to put in more time and work harder to increase my skill level because my competitors are also getting incrementally better.

There are several coding frameworks used in software engineering, from Django and Python to Java or C#? In your role, is being fluent in each important as you collaborate with customers and partners?

I first started building programs with Bash scripting, which was great for easily running system-level operations at scale, and then C programming, which made running operations and extracting information easier, but it was hard to speak about with people who weren’t in that space.

Python, a more “English-like” language, was easier to learn and even easier to explain. Building APIs became interesting to me as a way to access information from a website, rather than performing system-level functions. From there, I discovered Django. Now, I no longer had to write rudimentary logic for web-related tasks and could focus on more complex functions. Django gave me everything I needed to quickly create APIs and webpages which freed me up to focus more on managing, storing, and manipulating data.

I’m always surprised at how many systems people use; sometimes a minimum of four or five at one time. In addition to frameworks and languages, there are tools for rights management, title management, and workflow orchestration such as SDVI Rally which facilitates the deployment of additional tools and technical infrastructure including those used by edit workstations such as the procurement and launch of Adobe Premiere.

Each of these requires constant training and learning.

Your day-to-day project work requires collaboration across multiple parties - clients, vendors, even internal teams. How can you make sure everyone stays on the same page?

There is a real, tangible benefit that comes from clarifying requirements and disseminating that information back to your team, for example, through a ticketing system for everyone to reference. Another challenge may be determining how to reproduce the same outcome many times for many scenarios with one tool, or deciding which course is more effective: bulk versus manifest driven deliveries. Then there’s the matter of working across client platforms using things built by the client for us and managing the missing pieces. That requires close collaboration not only between internal stakeholders and engineers but also with the external stakeholders, the client.

If you're hiring for a new employee now in coding and engineering, what do you want to see in a candidate: coding skills or their personality, mindset, and creativity? All of the above?

If I'm looking for someone to do Python or Dango, it’s easy to determine within a few minutes if they know the language or not. I look for coachability, curiosity, and raw skills. If someone is asking the right questions – or even the wrong ones – they’ve at least started the conversation. That's a huge selling point for me. I don't have to spend all my time teaching you the language, but instead teaching and helping you understand the problems that our company is trying to solve. It's more about walking in the door with an attitude of “I want to be better,” and being willing to embrace all the things necessary to make that happen.

If you could give yourself one piece of advice when navigating the early years of your career, what piece of advice would you share?

Whether it's coding or any other problem in your life, look at it for what it is. Allowing yourself to be wrong helps remove the need for blame and allows you to better understand what you are doing within the parameters of a structure. I’ve lost countless hours thinking the system or program was wrong just because it didn’t do what I wanted it to do. I'm more likely to get struck by lightning three times than find the issue was a problem in the system and not how I was using the system.

Shifting blame is easy. However, moving back to first principles helped me realize that when something isn’t working properly, it’s more than likely that I’m in the wrong rather than the established system.

It's super important to stick to first principles. Be coachable and check your ego at the door. Explore, invent new things but don’t try to reinvent the wheel unless absolutely necessary.

TMT Insights is a professional services and software development company delivering leading capabilities in the digital supply chain, including media content management, cloud technology, and SaaS/D2C experiences to global media companies. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills within the media & entertainment, digital & cloud technology space, our team offers industry leading services such as strategy and CXO advisory, product ideation & innovation, cloud transformation, process re-engineering and development to our partners. As early adopters of new technologies, we embrace the power of collaboration and work with our partners to combine our guidance with action to further drive efficiency, value, and scale to their communities. www.tmtinsights.com

Note: If you’re an M&E professional that is interested in participating, please submit your request for consideration at https://tmtinsights.com/contact-us.