Just out of college as an economics major, Rob Koch saw the transformative powers of computers.

Working at a retirement administration company in New Jersey, he watched his colleagues working case by case to fix errors in clients’ retirement accounts. “It was pure drudgery and took a lot of time” says Rob.

“That changed me from an aspiring economist into someone in the software field with an eye on improving business workflow” says Rob.

Deaf since birth, Rob had always enjoyed being with an interpreter during school. Rob said that “the other kids didn’t like to be around other adults so they would avoid me because of that”. Nonetheless, Rob enjoyed the interpreters company and “would have really intelligent conversations with the interpreters rather than with other students”.  This experience helped Rob develop a more mature and big-picture way of understanding how things worked and figure out solutions from a unique viewpoint.


An important influence on Rob’s big shift to architecture almost never came about. At his office he met a brilliant system’s architect, and although they worked together Rob “didn't interact with him because he was really hard to lip read”.

One day, when they went out for happy hour, Rob brought along his interpreter. They were chatting and really “hit it off”. He told Rob that he “should look into system’s architecture because of the way that I think, and the way that I approach things by finding value in certain areas”.

Today, Rob is the lead architect for Big Data and Cloud Computing at S & P Global, which provides financial data for business and investors. Rob is even more passionate about the future, especially the disruptive technology called the Cloud. “It has the potential for tremendous rewards over diminishing risks” says Rob. “Event-driven architecture will transform the workplace into being more real-time without needing to increase processing power.”

Rob says how you interact with others and present your ideas to them is the most essential skill people need in business. “You may come up with transformative ideas and have the skills to make it happen. But it’s how you sell it to management and stakeholders that are is most important.”

Rob’s advice? Be proficient at creating compelling presentations that include return on investment numbers. “Some of the numbers may actually be educated guesses, but it helps set the scene and to better visualize the potential. Those skills will carry you a long time.”

The Covid-19 pandemic forced Rob to work from his home in Denver, but as a software developer he is one of the lucky ones. Making the transition to a home office wasn’t a problem and it has allowed him to spend more time with his family. He and his wife had already decided to home-school their three kids, so that adjustment also wasn’t very difficult. But Rob does miss enjoying the daily interaction with his co-workers and the give and take of an office environment.

As a result of the pandemic, Rob says the trend toward virtual workspaces, already well established, is accelerating. “We are well on the way to create virtual workspaces supported by great workflow, collaboration, and video conferencing tools.”

And as a deaf person, Rob feels a bit more vindicated about the increased use of subtitles, captioning and even sign language interpreters in teleconferencing. “Companies have been pretty resistant to provide these things, making excuses they're too expensive or too much logistics involved, but now, due to the pandemic, it’s happening”.

Some webinars now include even a button you can push, and a sign language interpreter pops up in the corner of the live stream. “Something like that is extremely useful especially in Q&A sessions, which normally are very limited interactively” he says.

When speaking about the future of work Rob says that “I feel I’ll still be involved in the next 20 years. Just think about machine learning and artificial intelligence. There is always something to improve on, to leverage the ever-increasing power of computing. To me, work is about being challenged and I like coming up with solutions to constantly improve myself and what I am doing.”