Virtual Coffee w/ HarperDB's EVP of Engineering ☕️🧑‍💻
Tags: programming, discuss, career, javascript
Published: 2022-04-19 14:57:43

While swag giveaways are always fun, this time we're doing a different kind of giveaway -- one that will (_hopefully_) provide a lot more value than a free T-shirt 😉.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/xdjkp01dlc9fodb2hiau.png)

We're offering a virtual coffee, also known as a video chat, with HarperDB's EVP of Engineering & Co-Founder, Kyle Bernhardy. This is a unique opportunity to ask any questions - whether it be related to entrepreneurship, programming, data, leading a team, journey into tech, etc. - or just a chance to sit and chat with a super cool and knowledgable dude. Kyle is an incredible resource, and a great contact to have in your network. 

__Entering this giveaway contest is easy!__ All you have to do is engage with our post on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/harperdbio/status/1516085905085419523) or [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/p/Ccf56susZTS/), and the winner will be picked at random by the end of the week. 

🕺🕺🕺

__Who is Kyle?__ 
[Kyle Bernhardy](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylebernhardy/) has over 20 years of experience in the tech industry and has held leadership roles in product development, support, and consulting at companies ranging in size from startup to publicly traded. Kyle is the co-inventor of 2 patents, and he's an expert in cloud architecture as well as multiple programming languages.

Kyle was also recently on the [Stack Overflow Podcast](https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/10/12/podcast-383-a-database-built-for-a-firehose/) and the [Code Story Podcast](https://codestory.co/podcast/bonus-kyle-bernhardy-harperdb/) sharing a bit about the HarperDB founding story, and he was even on the [Code Newbie Podcast](https://www.codenewbie.org/podcast/what-are-some-database-architectures-and-their-use-cases) talking about different database architectures and their use cases.

Excerpt from the Code Story podcast description: 

>Kyle Bernhardy had a less than traditional path to the tech world. He has been in the industry since the late 90’s, but it all started when he was growing up, attempting to program text adventures games on his Commodore 64. In High School, he started running and that became a major part of his life – so much so, he went to run for Penn State University. He settled into an exercise and sports science major, so he could stay close to the sport.

>Post college – he didn’t know what to do with his degree. He worked in a few corporate fitness centers, but didn’t enjoy what he was doing and didn’t see a path for himself. During that time, he ended up getting a job in tech support. He grew in this role, in his knowledge of DB basics, SQL and supporting database reporting. Once this happened, he moved into the development world. Programming for Kyle is a creative outlet, but not for art… for problem solving. In 2010, he started working for a data center company and met his now co-founder. They would hang out and chat about what it would be like to build something together. While working for a large data aggregation company, he worked through a number of data availability, reliability, and infrastructure around massive data processing. Internally, he thought there must be a better way.

If you can't tell, I'm super excited about sharing this opportunity! Pop on over to [Twitter](https://twitter.com/harperdbio/status/1516085905085419523) if you'd like to have a virtual coffee with Kyle, and please leave a comment below if you have any questions.