Who I learned from · 2017–2022
Vince Poloniato
Vince was my first boss. He hired me as a co-op student in 2017, believed in me, and gave me the opportunity that shaped my entire life: within a year I was the only developer on a fleet-tracking platform that paying customers relied on every day. From Vince I learned to think and operate like a business owner.
Who I learned from
- Who
- Vince Poloniato
- Role
- Founder, Trackem
- To me
- My first boss: Trackem’s founder, who believed in me as a student and gave me the opportunity that shaped my life.
- When
- 2017–2022
Who Vince is
Founder of Trackem, the Brantford GPS and telematics company, in 2004, and CEO of its parent, Solutions Into Motion, which also runs the WhereSafe consumer tracking brand.
How we met
A co-op interview loop in May 2017. By September I was on my first outage call with Vince in the middle of a database migration, and by April 2018 I was full-time and the lone developer.
What I learned
How to think and operate like a business owner. The way Vince talked about ideas made me want to build them. He was always excited about new opportunities and possibilities, and he had a gift for putting anything in layman’s terms. Some of his best advice I only understood years later, like the benefits of working as an independent contractor, taxes included.
Owning production
When the platform went down there was nobody else to call, and that first outage call in September 2017 taught me more than a year of school. When I rebuilt the backend on AWS in October 2020 and cut the server bill from about $5,140 to $265 a month, Vince raised my rate and moved me onto project pricing: paid for the outcome, not the hours. That is how I price client work today.