Be your authentic self: how to build a career in tech

In a recent episode of the First Person podcast, we met with Greg Finnigan. Greg is a company founder who has navigated a career through hardware distribution, to security software and on to the cloud, working in both large corporates and startups.  

In a wide-ranging and fascinating chat Greg gave us the benefit of his experience of multiple decades in the tech industry. Here then are four things to consider when building a career in tech.  

You can view our interview here, listen to it here, or watch in the box below:   

Be your authentic self 

We asked Greg to outline his biggest failure, and what he learnt from it. The answer was unusual, insightful and generous.  

“My biggest mistake was not being myself,” Greg said. “I realized that I was adapting quite a lot to the environment that I was in. I wasn’t my natural self being my work self.” 

But why does this matter?  

“It’s exhausting. It’s not genuine. People have noticed and are calling me out on it,” was Greg’s emphatic response. 

Greg said he took a conscious decision to be his natural self.   

“I thought to myself: ‘I don’t need to do this anymore’. I’m good enough being my authentic self. I made a key decision to say: ‘I’m going to be an open book as I am and let people make their own decisions based on that’.” 

And the outcome? In the decades since Greg has pivoted and progressed. His career has developed in a way that suits his capabilities and interests, spanning three sectors in a way that feels natural to him but wouldn’t be the natural path for all. 

Follow your instincts, move with the industry 

These transitions have been important for Greg, who moved from hardware distribution to security software, and then on to cloud. Each move now feels perfectly mapped to wider industry trends. It’s worked for Greg, but he made each change for reasons that were natural to him at the time.  

Greg started in sales at a hardware distributor. Why tech in the first place? 

“Honestly, I was interested in the money being made in tech in the 90s,” Greg told us. “It quickly became a place where I met an incredible group of people. I started out as an account manager and ended up as the general manager for Europe.”  

After a decade in distribution, Greg felt the pull of security software, working for big vendors such as Symantec, Kaspersky and Intel. Why make that switch?  

“It felt advantageous to get into working for vendors. I worked in various roles, but they were all pan-European roles, usually in management or account management. It was tremendously good fun, and a time of big professional and personal change.” 

It was also a time of great growth in cybersecurity. But after a decade, Greg moved on.  

“I initially came out of Intel into the startup world. It was a very conscious choice,” he told us.  

“I was fascinated about what I’d heard about the differences between the corporate world and the startup world. I wanted to challenge myself. It’s good fun.”  

Greg spent a year as the managing director of a FinTech startup, and then launched his own clean tech business with partners. Five years on he switched back to corporate life, and moved into cloud with AWS.  

“It was so entrepreneurial. It was fascinating for me that how they could create such a culture with a million employees. When an opportunity came to join AWS, I jumped at the chance.” (See also: how to be a successful startup founder.)

Take nothing for granted, learn from failure 

Greg enjoyed his stint with AWS, and fully entered the business of cloud. But now he is back in the startup world which he feels is his natural home. 

He told us that he feels better equipped than ever to go it alone outside the corporate world, in part because of the lessons he learnt last time around. Take nothing for granted.  

“In the clean tech startup I co-founded we had some incredible traction with a government department,” Greg said.  

“We got our product into regulation, something called Boiler Plus, which was announced in 2018. We built our business plan and our aspirations and our forecasts on what government was telling us were the goals for this regulation.” 

In short: they did everything right and had, in Her Majesty’s Government, a client you could bank on. Until you couldn’t. 

“This was at a time when UK government was going through quite an upheaval with general elections, and then COVID hit,” Greg explained. The net result? “The basis of our business was built on very shaky foundations.” 

Greg told us that as painful as this was, it’s given him a healthy wariness around a sure thing.  

“That was a very humbling experience for me. I’ve never encountered something where I was so off with reality versus what we were forecasting, and I couldn’t do a lot about it,” he said.  

You can do everything right and still fail. But that doesn’t mean you don’t give it another go – wearing those scars. (See also: How to be a great Chief Product Officer.)

Pick the best people and tools 

We asked Greg to synthesize all he has learnt, and offer advice to someone starting out. What should one consider when looking to start a career? 

He told us that even a year ago he would have said only the people you work with. But now: people and tools.  

“What a world we’re moving into with AI,” Greg said. “If I was starting out today, I would think very much about the people and the tools that you’re going to use. There are so many tools out there that are now coming out because of generative AI and agentic AI, that it’s driving huge competitive advantage for folks that use those tools effectively.” 

But the main thing? Greg is adamant. It’s the people you spend your time with. Whether you are hiring, or plotting your next move, think about who you will be doing it alongside. 

“People. Think about who you have in the business, how they deal with you, how your values line up to them,” he advised.   

“I can’t underestimate the importance of this when you’re in a startup scaling a business or even growing a business within an established organization. Your relationship with your team, the trust and respect you build, it’s got to be based upon some sort of common understanding of values.” 

Before you go: Watch First Person and meet the most interesting people in IT.