Get to Know CyberGRX: Meet Mike Duskis

by CyberGRX

Meet Mike, Test Manager

1. Where did you grow up?

Southern California, back when Orange County still had orange groves – and strawberry fields too.

2. What brought you to CyberGRX?

The last time I was on the market, I was looking for more than just a job. I wanted to do some real good for the world. It turned out that I had several options but my interview with Mickey Neeley, “Employee #2” at CyberGRX reduced the decision to a no-brainer. CyberGRX is positioned to re-design the cybersecurity landscape in favor of the good guys.

3. What do you do at CyberGRX/what’s your typical day like?

I’m the Test Manager within Engineering. If you think of our product development organization like a car, the testers and developers in test form the auto glass that lets us look around and see where we’re actually going. My team manages itself for the most part, so my own job boils down to providing general guidance and some tooling but mostly keeping myself and other obstacles out of the way.

4. What advice would you give to your teenage self?

I’d be tempted to prattle on about the value of learning to pick your own voice out of the chorus of voices in your head but that kid didn’t listen to his mother. What chance would I have?

5. What has had the greatest impact on your life?

Adversity! The School of Hard Knocks taught me lessons that I was too stubborn to learn any other way. For example, it’s amazing how far you can walk when you choose to ignore the rockiness of the road and the pain in your joints and channel all of your focus into putting one foot in front of the other.

6. What’s your hidden super power?

I have a playful imagination and the ability to entertain strange ideas without judging them. For example, last year I imagined an automated test that described the general shapes of the data it would require without concern for where the data would come from, how it would be created, or any detail that was uninteresting to the test. It was a zany and apparently self-contradictory idea. Today it is a working system and a critical building block for our tests because my colleagues in CyberGRX engineering were willing to play along and contribute their various superpowers to the project.

Continue Reading: Get To Know Gary W. Phipps