DECEMBER 2005 :: CAREERS

Settled in Seattle
How I Got Here: Daryn Nakhuda, Chief Technology Officer

By Adelle Waldman
CollegeJournal.com

Sometimes geography is destiny.

It was for Daryn Nakhuda, a 28-year-old chief technology officer of a Seattle-based software company. Moving to Seattle turned out to be an important career decision, although he didn't know it at the time.

Daryn's Insights

• 'The stuff I was learning in school was nothing compared to what I was learning working'

• 'I'm still totally a lazy slacker in my personal life, but the complete opposite when I'm working'

FOR MORE CAREERS ARTICLES, VISIT CAREERJOURNAL.COM

Mr. Nakhuda grew up in Baltimore and for his first two years of college attended the University of Maryland in nearby College Park. He was a chemistry major who thought about going to med school.

Between his freshman and sophomore years, in the summer of 1995, he went to Alaska to work in a national forest. On his way back, he spent a week in Seattle. It was probably the most fateful trip of his life.

"I liked the city, and I liked the music," he says. (This was back when grunge was still big.) "I grabbed an application for the University of Washington."

Ready for a Change

During his freshman year at Maryland, he says, he'd become intrigued by the Internet and had begun taking computer-science courses, and his interest began to move from medicine to technology. He says it vaguely occurred to him that Amazon.com and Microsoft were located in Seattle, but that wasn't the only or even the largest factor in his decision. He was ready for a change, and moving to the West Coast seemed to be the thing.

He was accepted into the University of Washington, but he didn't get into the computer-science program. Still, he says, he decided to transfer, and take as many computer-science courses as he could.

His timing couldn't have been better: The dot-com boom was just starting.

As his junior year at University of Washington rolled to a close, Mr. Nakhuda had to decide if he'd return to Maryland for the summer or look for work in Seattle. He'd procrastinated and had only about a week to make up his mind.

Mr. Nakhuda had noticed some Web sites that he liked were designed by Medius Interactive, a now-defunct Seattle company. On a whim, he emailed the company to ask if it had any internship opportunities.

He got a phone call the next day, and, a few days later, he was hired as a programming intern for $8.50 an hour.

Like his decision to apply to the University of Washington on a whim, this first technology job would prove to be decisive in Mr. Nakhuda's professional life.

The company was small-about eight people when he started-so he got to do a lot more than just make coffee. "I had enough skills to get involved in big projects and picked up new skills on the job," he says.

By the end of the summer, he was offered a full-time job and he jumped at it, he says. "The stuff I was learning in school was nothing compared to what I was learning working," he says.

As a college senior, Mr. Nakhuda balanced a full-time job with being a full-time student.

But he graduated from school and was promoted to lead programmer.

In 1999, Mr. Nakhuda says, he was recruited by a former supervisor at Medius about a job as a software engineer at Altrec.com, a dot-com that sells outdoor equipment and apparel. He says he worked on the development of its e-commerce shopping cart and catalog system. Altrec did not respond to calls for comment.

Doubled His Salary

About a year and a half later, Mr. Nakhuda left to take a position as a senior programmer at eNIC, a company that administers domain names. Once again, he had been recruited by someone from his first job, he says.

The company doubled his salary and was doing well despite the economic slowdown. But in 2002, eNIC was bought by a large company.

Mr. Nakhuda began doing free-lance programming. His biggest client became Spam Arrest, a small software company in Mercer Island, Wash.

Within a few months, it offered him a full-time job, and he accepted the position.

Last fall, Mr. Nakhuda was promoted to chief technology officer, his current post.

Now he's more involved with the business side and managing. One day, he says, he'd like to start a company of his own.

In the meantime, he says, he loves his work and is comfortable financially. For a twentysomething, he feels like things have worked out better than he ever imagined when he picked up that application to University of Washington 10 years ago. He says he's relieved to have stumbled into a career he enjoys.

"I'm still totally a lazy slacker in my personal life, but the complete opposite when I'm working," he says.