Episode Information
Show NotesHis father got tired of him playing video games. So he threw a book at him.
Thirty years later, Dennis Moriarity is Chief Information Officer at Link Technologies in Las Vegas, and the book his dad threw “Learn C in 24 Hours” started everything.
Dennis grew up in LA and wanted to be a police officer. He applied to the LA Sheriff’s Department at 18 and didn’t get in. He started a business during the dot-com era, watched it dry up when the bubble burst, then went back to college at 20. He was so far ahead of his classmates that his instructor asked him to teach some of the courses. When he graduated, he landed an internship at Bank of New York, was put on the mainframe team despite being a C and C++ developer, and spent the next 11 years rising from intern to lead developer to production support manager to VP. He was still writing code six years into management.
Then his wife wanted out of upstate New York. They moved to Las Vegas. He took a six-month contract at Credit One, then applied for what he expected to be a programmer job at the City of North Las Vegas, just to step away from management. Once he got there, he saw problems everywhere. He told a director he was interested in the IT Director role. The city opened it. He applied and got it. What came next tested everything he thought he knew about leading.
WHAT DENNIS MORIARITY DOES NOW:Dennis is Chief Information Officer at Link Technologies in Las Vegas. He helps organizations identify technology gaps and execute projects, and serves as internal CIO for Link advising on technologies to grow the business and better serve clients.
KEY INSIGHTS FROM THIS CONVERSATION:Your title doesn’t make you a leaderDennis spent years in management before saying it plainly: “Your position doesn’t make you a leader.” He talks about what leadership actually means — helping people get to a better version of their lives, asking what they want to be when they grow up even if they’re 50, and treating people the way you want to be treated. “I’m not here just to lead the city. I’m here to lead every individual underneath me to a better life.”
Being overqualified is not the same as having nothing to learnAt Bank of New York, Dennis was put on the mainframe team even though his background was in C and C++. He thought it was a poor fit. It turned out to be one of the most valuable experiences of his career — not just for the COBOL and JCL, but for what the structured Wall Street environment taught him about planning, change management, and why institutional knowledge exists.
Imposter syndrome is really about managing yourselfStepping into the director role at North Las Vegas, Dennis didn’t struggle with infrastructure or help desk or reporting lines. He struggled with himself. “That was the biggest challenge for me as the director. It wasn’t learning the infrastructure. It wasn’t learning help desk or managing any other people. It was managing myself. That was the hardest part.”
Build trust by getting the right people in the roomDennis read “Speed of Trust” early in his leadership career and built his whole approach around it. He never asked vendors to come talk to him. He asked them to come talk to his team. “I’m just the pocketbook. That’s all I was. I was the final decision maker on if we were gonna spend the money or not. But my team was gonna tell me if it was gonna help us or not.”
Stay quiet until you actually understand what they wantWhether in a client meeting or a team conversation, Dennis’s rule is the same: stay quiet. “The minute you open your mouth, all of your followers are gonna jump to whatever you just said.” He says when he does speak, it lands because Dennis doesn’t like to talk.
TOPICS COVERED:• “If you wanna play these, then learn how to make them” the book that started a career• Writing his first email program and falling in love with programming• Wanted to be a police officer: applying to the LA Sheriff’s Department at 18• Going bac...