Where military experience meets app development, hear Angie Bonini and Joe Anselmi talk mission focus, debugging, and user-centric design.
Emma Coppin
Multimedia Content Lead, Thought Leadership and Customer Stories
Workday
Two military veterans, two branches, one shared philosophy: "Make it work, make it right, make it fast." Workday Extend developers Angie Bonini and Joe Anselmi discuss their journeys from military service in the US Marine Corps and US Army to building apps. They share how military leadership lessons apply directly to software development—focusing on mission objectives, overcoming high-pressure environments, embracing user experience, and turning code "messes" into learning opportunities.
Angie Bonini, Workday Extend Developer, The Groove
Angie is a former US Army Military Police officer deployed to Iraq who leveraged her GI Bill to earn her Master's degree. Now an Extend developer and product team member, she specializes in user-centered design, breaking complex requirements, and rapid problem-solving.
Joe Anselmi, Team Lead, Intecrowd
Joe is a former US Marine Corps data systems administrator. He leads Workday Extend teams by applying mission-oriented leadership: giving developers clear objectives, enabling creative problem-solving, and driving high-quality code delivery under tight deadlines.
Joe Anselmi: There was a huge amount of trust, except for one company... Is your computer plugged in? If I come down there and it's not plugged in, I'm not coming back.
Joe Anselmi: Welcome to The Conversation with Angie Bonini & Joe Anselmi. This is my good friend Angie Bonini. She's been with The Groove for about a year as an Extend consultant and transitioned to a product team.
Angie Bonini: This is my friend Joe. He is an Extend team lead over at Intecrowd. Tell me about your military service.
Joe Anselmi: Enlisted in the Marine Corps straight out of high school in 2019 in data systems administration. In a high-pressure environment during training and unit handovers, I had to learn fast. Seeing the difference when you focus on the problem and fix it fast taught me to treat my clients and app development with the highest importance. What about yourself?
Angie Bonini: Joined the Army at 19, deployed to Iraq as Military Police. It paid for my GI Bill, my undergrad in 2 years, and Master's in 3 semesters. That's how it translates to who I am today.
Joe Anselmi: What did you learn serving that helps you today?
Joe Anselmi: Looking at things from another perspective. If you lay out every single step and your team misses one, the whole plan goes up in flames. Tell them the objective and let them get there. Our CTO used to say: "Make it work, make it right, make it fast." Focus on getting the objective accomplished.
Angie Bonini: I was tired of being told how to get to the objective. I have creative ways of getting things done. When I started coding, Chris Humphrey looked at my code, patted me on the head, and wrote Arcane Auditor just because he got tired of fixing my code!
Joe Anselmi: Are you serious?
Angie Bonini: I love breaking things and figuring them out. If you just let code run, you get a huge mess, but a huge mess is a good learning opportunity because you have to figure out where it's broken.
Joe Anselmi: It's good learning.
Angie Bonini: Yeah!
Joe Anselmi: Senior developers often start with system constraints, but newer devs approach from UX—what do I want the user to see, do, and feel?
Angie Bonini: User interface and user experience allow developers to build a mental model of what the app should do.
Joe Anselmi: It gives people that feeling of forward progress and joy in coding. Thanks so much for talking to me, Angie—awesome to hear from a fellow developer and fellow vet. Looking forward to carrying on this conversation and, of course, the rest of DevCon.
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