Matt Mercieca vividly remembers the 6" monochrome green screen on his family's first Sanyo Luggable and the time he spent messing with the Basic and Pascal code his brother wrote, erasing and rewriting without saving so he wouldn't notice. This top-secret coding is what made Mercieca fearless when it came to technology:
"I realized there was always a way out on a computer. You can't really break anything or do something irrevocable, which allowed me the freedom to create and explore. There's almost always an out and I love that. I suppose there's always the chance of some property damage but that just never scared me."
Years later, when he ended up at Michigan State University, Matt knew he wanted to major in Computer Science. But, as he began to finish up his classes in a quick three years, he realized he wasn't quite ready to leave the cocoon of academia. The desire to continue learning led him to the English Department and, eventually, to a dual degree in CS and English Literature.
"The English department was so different than the school of engineering," Mercieca remembers. "It was so much less frantic, so I decided to stick around. I felt, and feel, strongly that it's important for every engineer to be able to communicate well; the courses I took and the conversations I had about literature really helped me interact fully with others and be understood."
Matt's experience studying literature sparked dreams of teaching high school English. As he began the slow, steady journey to become a teacher, he quickly realized an income would be necessary to get through the process and a friend of a friend connected him with a job as a programming intern at Lansing-Area software product company, TechSmith.
Unbeknownst to Matt, once an English teacher finds a job they almost never leave it. This made finding an open position pretty difficult; but, as luck would have it, Matt was discovering how much he enjoyed his work at TechSmith and began to ramp down the search for a teaching post.
Matt's temporary programming internship turned into a 15 year career at TechSmith, with titles ranging from Web Developer to Senior Software Engineer. Over his last few years at TechSmith Matt began to develop an itch to try consulting which led him to seek out companies like Mutually Human. Matt's unique abilities, to both code and communicate, made him a prime candidate for a consultancy; and his jovial, kind, and curious nature made him a great choice for Mutually Human.