Interview with Scott McConaghie, History 150 Spring 2025, Conducted by Nathan McConaghie, March 27, 2025.
Overview to Social Change Interview:
Technology has changed in many ways over the years, helping the world progress faster together as a society. It has changed the way that we live forever and will always continue to become more and more advanced. Companies used to have entire rooms just to fit one computer while compared to today everyone has their own personal laptop and smartphones. Phones can do what those massive computers did in a fraction of the time that it took for them. It has also made how countries fought in wars a lot different in the ways that they attacked each other. Desert Storm was a war in the early 1990’s that lasted for only about a year. It was the first war that had modern technology to what we have today. Technology helped wars end a lot quicker because of the added amount of precision and deadliness that it added to things like guns, missiles, and bombs.
This interview is going to be talking about technology has impacted business and the military. Scott McConaghie started working at his company in 1995 after leaving the military in 1992. He talks about the experiences that he had while technology progressed in his fields of work. He also talks about what it was like being in the Army during Desert Storm. He was a part of the 5th engineer platoon who had to locate bombs and landmines to make sure others couldn pass. Scott has worked at the same company, Accenture Federal Services, for the past 30 years working his way up to associate director.
Biography:
I am interviewing my dad, Scott McConaghie who has primarily lived in Northern Virginia for his entire life. He lived outside Philadelphia until he was 5. He has one sibling which is a sister. He has three sons, including me, with the other two being older. He was born on June 6th, 1968 and served in the US Army for 3 years during Operation Desert Storm. He graduated from Virginia Tech with his bachelor’s degree in BIT. He has also worked with the same company, Accenture Federal Services, for the past 30 years. I will interview about the change in technology in business over the past 30 years and reasons why he wanted to join the Army.
Transcript:
Nathan McConaghie 0:06
Hi. I’m Nathan McConaghie. I’m interviewing my father, Scott McConaghie, and the topics today that we’ll be discussing are advancement in technology over the years and what it’s like working in the military. So Dad, you want to introduce yourself Sure. Scott McConaghie, I’m a 1994 Virginia Tech graduate. I’ve been working for Accenture federal services for a little over 30 years, doing it work, supporting both commercial clients and federal clients. All right, so first question will be, just like general overall, how would you describe how much you’ve enjoyed your experiences in the army and your professional career.
Scott McConaghie 0:46
Army was had lots of ups and downs. I mean, I think it was a general big positive in my life. But not everything was fun. I seem to remember a lot more of the fun stuff than the non fun stuff. But, you know, there’s a lot of tough times when you’re in the military as well, between dealing with loneliness or stress or, you know, I actually, fortunately or unfortunately, was in a war zone for Desert Storm for six months, and there’s a lot of highs and lot of lows and lot of angst to come with that. Overall, it, think it made me a more focused person. Taught me a lot of leadership skills that I was able to use later in life. And even though I am grateful for the time that I served, I think it was a good Kickstarter for me to go out, finish up college and enter the business world.
Nathan McConaghie 1:37
All right, yeah, definitely. Can you tell me how long and why you wanted to join the military, and specifically the Army.
Scott McConaghie 1:44
I was struggling in college immediately after high school, probably wasn’t doing the amount of work I needed to do, so I was kind of looking for an option just to kind of get things going in the right way. So in the fall of 1989 I went and talked to a army recruiter, and a few months later, I was all signed up and ready to go. I wasn’t still sure where I wanted to do with my life at the time, so they offered me the opportunity to go in active duty for two and a half years that includes basic training and advanced individual training. So went in and did two and a half years in active duty, got out. My best friend from high school was at Virginia Tech, and had just graduated with this undergrad, and he was staying to get his MBA. So I transferred. I got, basically, was able to move down to Blacksburg, got into Virginia Tech, and six months after I was at Virginia Tech, I re upped into the National Guard for four years to give me one weekend a month and a few extra dollars to support myself while I was in college.
Nathan McConaghie 2:53
Okay, then you said it was about three years. Can you tell me what you knew about the Desert Storm conflict before you, like, joined the army, and then what your return back to the US was like?
Scott McConaghie 3:05
Well, the interesting part is, while I was in basic training in the army, one of my drill sergeants, I specifically remember him saying, you just joined the military at one of the most boring times in history, the Berlin wall. Wall had just come down. There was no threat of any kind of war anywhere. Of course, that was January of 1990 when I went into basic training. And by August of 1990 that’s when Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait, and next thing I know, two months later, I was on a plane heading that way. So things can change pretty quick. I didn’t have any expectation of being in a war zone and serving overseas.
Nathan McConaghie 3:46
What roles did you play in the army? And just like you already briefly described it like, what? What can you elaborate more on what your experience was like?
Scott McConaghie 3:55
So I signed up. I was my job in the Army. I was a combat engineer. It was one of the very few roles that I could only go active for two and a half years on. You know, some of the more technical roles, or maybe some roles that sound a little bit more exciting nowadays, were roles that were going to want you to sign up for four or five or six years. So not knowing what I was going to do yet with my life, but was just going for this experience. I chose the one that gave me that. So a combat engineer is basically their job is to run with the infantry and the artillery and the armor, and they do what’s called mobility and counter mobility. So in Desert Storm, we were the aggressors, right? We were trying to repel Saddam Hussein and his troops back into Iraq. So basically, they had set out a whole bunch of deterrents to keep us from doing that, whether that be minefield or berms or stuff like that, while our job was to get everybody else through those types of obstacles. So that was part of our mobility posture that we hadjust made sure, like so, pretty much you guys, were just there to help. The the other soldiers just make their way like throughout the desert. Yep. So, you know, everybody was mechanized. We’re in the middle of the desert. Nobody was walking on foot. Everybody was on some kind of a wheeled vehicle or a track vehicle. But there were berms that had been built. There were 14 foot tall that we needed to get holes cut holes in the berms with some bulldozers and stuff, so that the tanks and infantry could kind of get through. There were minefields we had to clear. There were Constantino wire, barbed wire fences that had been built. There was all kinds of obstacles that Iraq had put in place that to try to slow the advance of people, that we had to kind of get through and support them. And then there was a lot of instances where those mechanized vehicles, whether those infantry or armor, if they we came across any Iraqis that were giving up flight, waving the white flag, they kept going. And we’d have to sit there and collect all the prisoners of war, get them organized, and send them back to the MPs, and then go catch up with everybody.
Nathan McConaghie 6:02
And then you already briefly described you had a friend, was the reason why you went to Virginia Tech, but you also elaborate why you chose BIT?
Scott McConaghie 6:09
yep, so I was, I was all. I was always very good at computers. In high school, when I first started college, I started as a computer science major, and realized that while I was good at computers, that was not, probably not what I was supposed to be doing. So when I got out of the Army, my best friend I went down to live with at Virginia Tech. He was telling me all about B I T, which was Business Information Technology is what it’s called today. It was called Management Science at the time. It’s basically the most technical degree there is in the business school, because it’s basically take, you know, learning how to use computer computers, decision support systems. It was a nice blend of being technical and then the functional side of business and kind of marrying that together. So when he told me about it, I went and researched it and said, he goes, you would really he knows me. I’ve known this guy since I was in fourth grade. So he basically said, No, I think this would be you. And the more I read about it, I’m like, that sounds exactly what I’m looking for now, knowing that after a couple years of trying to be a computer science major, that I was like, This really does sound like the right fit. So that’s how I picked B it. And then in B it, awful lot of people on that major at the time were looking into the big six consulting firms to do work with. I don’t think all six are not around anymore, anyway, so that’s how I got my job. Was interviewing on campus for the big six at the time, and got my job at Anderson Consulting, which morphed into being Accenture and Accenture federal services, where I’m still at today, is, is Accenture, one of those big six that you previously mentioned a lot of times. The big six were referred to as the account the the big six accounting firms that had consulting arms, so Anderson consult, sorry. Arthur Anderson was one of the big six, and their consulting arm was called Anderson Consulting, okay? Arthur Andersen and Anderson Consulting had what we call the divorce when they were in the late 1999 and 2000 so we actually split and became separate companies altogether, and the Anderson Consulting side became Accenture, and that’s when it officially split. So Accenture is not considered one of the big six. But since Anderson Consulting was a subsidiary to Arthur Anderson and company, when I was interviewing, you know, it was a lot of these audit firms that were known as the Big Six, and all those audit firms had it arms that were parts of them, soit just kind of falls into it by default.
Nathan McConaghie 8:40
All right,so I know you’ve worked there for about 30 ish years. Can you just kind of describe, like, what roles you’ve played there, like when you first started, like compared to where you are now, sure, my very first role?
Scott McConaghie 8:52
Well, I did a lot of delivery work for clients, almost all the time I was on site. As I’ve moved up the ranks, I’ve switched back and forth between the commercial side of Accenture, serving commercial companies and the federal side, serving us departments. And now I’m currently operating as a running a PMO for one of our portfolios. But starting at the beginning, I remember it was interesting. I didn’t have my own PC for three years. The first thing I did when I walked in as they handed me. I sat there in front of a huge unit Unix station. Had to quickly learn Unix and do performance testing on a piece of software that we were building for the phone company to do to run their bills for them. Kind of morphed everything from that. I actually remember in 1998 being issued my first PC by the company. I was still basically working on client systems, client mainframes or Unix systems, but also had a PC there on my desk as well, all the way to today. So the big thing at the time was known as client server. You can’t do all your work on one machine, so you had multiple machines talk to each other, and each was responsible for processing different parts of the whatever client system you’re working on, and how that’s morphed to all the E commerce stuff around 2000 you know, and think websites like Amazon things were getting set up to just broad, organizational, wide ERP systems and billing systems that I got involved in, ERPs, enterprise resource planning software. So for the last 15 or so years, I’ve been heavily involved in logistics work for the Defense Department.
Nathan McConaghie 10:32
Yeah, you already talked about some like you mentioned the technology you used when you first aired, compared to now, like you started with Unix. It was at more like a big server room. And then, right now, I know you have some sort of laptop. I don’t know if you know more about that, but just like you go,
Scott McConaghie 10:48
sure you so Unix, in that little world, is a version of Linux, right? Lennox is still around. Linux has lots of distributions. I had a big spark it was called the spark station. It was basically a desktop computer, kind of that was networked to all these other desktop computers. But I would, you know, had to learn Linux. It’s called Unix, that my version was called Unix at the time, just to run the test that we needed to run, right so there’s been a lot of different operating systems. Linux is still around. Obviously we moved from, I remember we were, we still had dos on our computers, and hadn’t really gotten to Windows 95 and stuff at the time. On the PC side, MacBooks weren’t really around. I actually my first computer back in the day was a Commodore, and my second computer was an apple 2e but that shows no relation to the Apple products of today. So lots of different operating systems figuring out how to get computers to talk to each other. The internet was, the Internet was pretty, pretty new at the time. It wasn’t all about doing work on one computer. Okay?
Nathan McConaghie 10:48
Then just right now you just have, like, an up to date, modern kind of, like Dell work, top laptop, right?
Scott McConaghie 11:08
Yeah. Most of the work we were doing for our clients, they either give us what we call GFE fund, government furnished equipment or with technology. Nowadays, we can actually work on our Accenture federal services computers. We can go in through a portal to log into our our clients, servers or clients Compute Cloud computers, and do our work remotely where we’re allowed to. We’re not allowed to, in all cases, depending on the agency that we’re working through, working for. But you know, we can be working through government furnished equipment, or we can be working through our own laptops and just go into virtual boxes and do what we do.
Nathan McConaghie 12:32
You briefly, you just mentioned remotely. I know you have worked primarily from home since the pandemic you just briefly describe, like, if you’ve enjoyed it more or less, or like, what’s been like, different just working at home since
Scott McConaghie 12:45
sure, I was probably one of the rare five days a week in the office guys for a long, long time, most people, pre COVID, in my experience, were four days a week in the office. I went in five days a week just for various reasons, but I got lots of work done on Fridays because there was nobody bothering me, because there wasn’t many people in the office. And I kind of like that. I always associate my Fridays pre COVID, going to the library as a college student, if you wanted to get away from the noise and you wanted to get focused on whatever, to me, that’s what the Fridays were. So it was a big pivot. I remember thinking, wow, I’m going to work for Home two weeks in a row. Was what they first told us when COVID came out. But I think it was even a bigger pivot for some of our clients. While we were always usually in the office as consultants, we were always moving around, going chasing down clients and having meetings. We were used to working on the run, so we actually spent quite a bit of time working with our federal counterparts, teaching them how to work when you’re not sitting in an office environment, how to be connected, all those types of things. We’ve had some of our agents, some of our clients, started returning to the office several years ago. There’s a new government mandate right now where they’re ordering law to go back in the office. From a consultant perspective, we always go where our clients are, so I’m content mostly still at home right now, just because of the clients I serve are not local or not back in the office, but we have a lot of our folks that are spending more and more time at our client sites and in our in our central offices than we than we were pre COVID.
Nathan McConaghie 13:33
Yeah. Then one last, like, kind of final, like, summary question. It’s, um, can you tell me what kind of similarities and differences you’ve noticed since working with people in the army compared to people you work with at Accenture now.
Scott McConaghie 14:28
So one of the things I always find interesting about the armywas a lot of the folks, I mean, I thought I had a pretty good work ethic before I went into the army. Most veterans will tell you that they think that veterans in the civilian workforce have a stronger work ethic than some civilian counterparts, just ready to kind of get, you know, roll up your sleeves and kind of get into it. I thought I used to have a pretty good work ethic beforehand, and that just kind of solicit solidified it for me. On that side,the issue.Thing that I really like about Accenture is We hire a lot of really bright kids coming out of college every single year, and I think the talent level that we hire, my work ethic gets paid off doing that. Because why? I don’t necessarily claim to be the smartest guy out there. I will outwork everybody that’s smarter than me the best of my ability, which I think has been kind of a key thing for me in my career. I’ve had experiences at clients, whether they both commercial clients and federal clients, where there’smaybe people that didn’t have quite the resume coming out of college, and you don’t necessarily always see the work ethic for some of our clients, which was great because they’re paying us to be there we go. Make them look good. That’s our job.But I was actually blessed to be with a in a with a good group of guys in the army that we all worked hard and and played hard, but we all we we got a lot of work done, and I got a highly talented group of folks that I work with at Accenture federal services that push me every day to be better. And I’m hoping I’m doing the same for them so that we can havebe producing a better product for our clients.
Nathan McConaghie 16:07
Yeah, well, that’s all questions I have. I think that, like concludes our interview, thank you for letting me interview.
Scott McConaghie 16:13
Sure you’re welcome.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Research:
Focuses on how those who switched to working from home due to the pandemic have increased their income and health. This website is relevant to my topics because it shows a recent change in how my dad used technology with his company. I would also agree with the article in the fact that my dad’s health benefitted from working from home since you have to be more mindful of it due to less movement. You are also making at home meals which are healthier for you. This article talks about the history of the different military branches and gives some insight on them. For example, it talks about which branches work for who and what they do. This article helps my topic because it talks about things like the demographics of the army and how it has changed. The surveys were taken in 2018 so they are still pretty up to date and accurate. This article is very much relatable to my interview because it is very similar to almost exactly what my dad did. Once COVID hit he realized that he could do pretty much everything from home and has done it ever since. This article just gives someone’s experience of how they also started working from home after the pandemic. Working from home used to be frowned upon in late 2000’s and early 2010’s because it just seemed like a crazy thing to do and was too much change to some people.
Interview and Technology process:
I used zoom to conduct the interview and set it up over text.
Transcription Process:
Some choices that I made during the transcription process was to leave as much of it in as I possibly could. I thought that leaving it in would keep it as authentic as possible.
Bibliography:
Marshall, Joey. “Those Who Switched to Telework Have Higher Income, Education and Better Health.” Census.Gov, 11 Apr. 2024, www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/03/working-from-home-during-the-pandemic.html.
“Demographics of the U.S. Military.” Council on Foreign Relations, Council on Foreign Relations, 13 July 2020, www.cfr.org/backgrounder/demographics-us-military.
“Another Day Not at the Office: Will Working from Home Be 2020’s Most Radical Change?” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 20 Sept. 2020, www.theguardian.com/business/2020/sep/20/wfh-not-office-working-from-home-2020-radical-change-effects-lockdown. (Peer Reviewed)