Greg Gennaro first put his hands on a violin as a 4-year-old. From that day forward, he was focused on making beautiful music with the instrument and was on a path to be a concert violinist. That was, until, the pandemic.

In early 2020, he was performing with the Houston Symphony after earning a bachelor’s and master’s in violin performance. But the pandemic and the temporary shutdown of live performances put his career trajectory on hold. That pause gave him a chance to reconsider his future.

“I felt like I was at a point where I had done enough as a violinist,” Gennaro recalled. “I’d had enough experiences where I wouldn’t feel regrets about leaving the field.”

Making the transition to tech

At that time, Greg knew he was interested in a career in tech, and began researching his options. On a whim, he logged into a job board called Handshake that he had signed up for during a graduate-level class, but never used.

“I signed in [to Handshake] and the first message at the top of my inbox was from a recruiter from Dev10 and it had come the day before. It was just a huge coincidence,” he said. “When I clicked on it, I went to the website, looked over the details and responded right away.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

Greg was part of a cohort of 20 Dev10 Associates who all entered training at the same time and were all assigned to the same client, a pharmacy benefits manager. During his client assignment, he was employed by Dev10, but at the end of 2023 — after 17 months of project work for his client — he converted to become a full-time employee of the client.

But how hard was it for a concert violinist to become a software engineer? Well, in Greg’s case he had taken college-level math courses, so he had a pretty solid foundation in the logical thinking needed to learn code. He described Dev10’s three-month training as a “full immersion” experience, similar to jumping into cold water. Soon, he was swimming and feeling very comfortable.

Of course, it helped that training was led by two experienced Dev10 instructors.

“The instructors were great, always available, always patient, very knowledgeable on all the things that they were talking about,” Greg said. “They could easily answer all the questions that the cohort had to ask.”

With that expert help, Greg successfully made the transition from a career in music to a career in tech. And he’s not done in evolving.

“One of the goals I have is to become more of a solutions architect, to have a wider scope of the way things are working and more of a say in how technologies and applications and services within a company are connected together,” he said.

As he works to reach that goal, Greg said he’s thankful for the opportunity Dev10 provided.

“It’s really changed my life in a lot of ways that I couldn’t be more grateful for,” he said.

Watch Greg's Video

Click on the questions below to hear Greg's answers