Notes on The Way: Tex Hanson

How were you called into the Way?

My dad came into the Church when they had my oldest sister, who’s about 10 years older than me. However, my mom was Catholic. And it was really an interesting experience growing up, having those two perspectives. It wasn’t until probably in my teen years that God started to work with me and open my mind to His Way being the only true way.  A big piece of that was the relationships that I built with friends in  my local church and regional area, especially as I started going to camps.  As I continued to progress through my teen years, I definitely felt God was opening my mind to more of an understanding of what I’d been taught from the time that I was young.

What is your line of work?

I’m a product consultant for Southwest Airlines. I’ve been in that role for almost 10 years, and I manage technology projects for our frontline folks.

Those are the people that work at the airport on the ground (loading and unloading bags from the airplane, as well as checking you in and scanning you onto the plane. Those people also do weight and balance for our airplanes.

Specifically, I’m a product owner of the software that we use for our weight and balance. When people scan everybody onto the airplane, they then take all the numbers of who they scanned, all the bag and cargo information from down below, as well as all the fuel information, they run that through our system, and send that off to the pilots.

What drew you to working in the airline industry?

Early on, I was very interested in aviation. I had a sister and two brothers-in-law that went to school to become airline pilots. So, watching her I really got interested and knew I wanted to do something with aviation.  I was pretty sure I wanted to become a pilot.

The one thing that made me pause about becoming a pilot was watching my sister go through the very beginnings of her career, and as a pilot you kind of are at the mercy of whatever schedule you get [even on the Sabbath].  I know that there are folks that have been able to work around that, but that discouraged me from going down that path. But I knew that I still wanted to be in the aviation industry.

What sort of education did you get to prepare for your career?

Growing up in Minnesota, we had a program called PSEO (which was post-secondary enrollment option), which allowed you to take college courses through Minnesota at a community college, and Minnesota would pay for the credit. I was able to do that my junior and senior years of high school about half the time, so I was able to graduate from high school with about 40 credits going into my degree, which was really awesome, because I was able to cut off a year of college.

I ended up finding a degree that was in airport management. That’s a business aviation degree. So, half my schooling was in the business school, and half my schooling was in the aviation school.

What has been your career path?

During the middle of my schooling a sister and brother-in-law that both worked for Southwest told me about some internship programs that Southwest had. I ended up putting in for a few internships with Southwest and getting one. I came down to Texas, stayed with my sister, and worked at Southwest for the summer, and that was a really cool experience.

At the end of that internship they asked me if I wanted to come back again for another internship the next year, which would be after I graduated in May. I was a bit hesitant because I was thinking,  ‘I’ve got one year left of school, I want to get a job after I graduate and don’t really want to go back to being an intern and not making a whole lot of money.’  But I prayed about it, and ended up coming to the conclusion I could come back and do another internship and, if nothing else, it would give me a little bit more experience and give me some time to try and find a job.

After I graduated and started my second internship, about halfway through the summer they ended up having a position open up on the team that I was interning on and I was able to put in for that. It helped me out quite a bit that I had two internships worth of experience working on this team. So I ended up getting hired on into that position, and started from there to work for Southwest.

My whole career has been at Southwest. They’ve been a really good company to work for. It’s definitely been a blessing to be where I’m at now.

What are the elements of your job that you enjoy the most?

I think the biggest thing that really brings me a lot of joy is working with our ground folks. There are close to 30,000 people that work at the airports on the ground for Southwest, all across country. Specifically for the scanning products and the weight and balance products that I work on, it touches almost 20,000 people.

So being able to be a voice for them and to be able to make enhancements and changes in the products that will impact them in a positive way, that’s what really motivates me. It’s knowing that these people are [in]their daily life using these tools, and I can either make it challenging because we have issues, or I can fix those and make it better for them. That’s what brings a lot of joy to me.

It’s really cool when we do go out to the airports working on projects and get their feedback and see them light up when we say, “Oh, hey, yeah, we’re about to make that change.” And they’re just filled with joy. That “oh, yes, that would make my life so much easier.” That’s what I like about my job.

Of course there are always elements of a job that we find more challenging. So, what are some of those for you?

There are times where we have issues, and either we have some type of outage, or we have some type of defect that comes up and it causes pain for the frontline user, and it can happen at any time.

Something happens in the middle of the night, or it might be in the middle of the day when we’re going through our normal day. And all of a sudden, we have to stop everything and get on a technology call to try and figure out what’s going on and how it’s impacting our frontline folks. Then coordinating the communication out to them of what is the problem, what we’re doing to fix it, and what a workaround might be.

So those happen, thankfully, not regularly. But when they do happen it is definitely a challenge to the job.

Sounds like a fun challenge.  In your work have you ever encountered a situation where you faced a moral dilemma, and if so, how have you handled it?

There is a 24/7 type operation, with an airline the size of Southwest and so that has come up in the past with the Sabbath being a challenge at times. But thankfully, I have a really understanding team, they know what I believe, and my stance on the Sabbath so it’s never been that big of an issue.

When we do have big deployments where maybe we have a command-
center type thing set up for a certain amount of time, I think all the relationships that I have had with my coworkers have really helped in that area.  It’s never really been that big of a challenge to say, “Hey? I can’t do this, can you cover me for this?” or “Hey, I can take Saturday night, if you can take Saturday morning.”

Have you ever made a job or career change?  And if so, was it intentional?

Although I haven’t really had a career change or even a job change from Southwest, I started as an intern in our regulatory compliance program, working on manuals, procedures and stuff for our frontline folks working on FAA regulatory things. And when I got hired, I was in that position for about a year and a half.

Although I enjoyed that work, it wasn’t nearly as fulfilling as what I feel like I’m doing now. But I had the opportunity to work on some little projects with the team that I’m now on and they ended up having a position open up on their team that I was able to put in for, and was able to move over onto that team. So, although not a career change, it was still a position change in the company..

What advice would you give someone in high school or junior high about pursuing a career that is personally fulfilling?

I think probably everybody says it, but finding something that you’re passionate about is definitely the biggest thing. But I would put an asterisk on that; find something that you’re passionate about, but don’t be stuck on one thing and be open to doors that God might be opening for you. I think, another thing [is] being open to changing your mind, and not turning down those opportunities.

Definitely talking with people that have similar interests, or people that you know are in a certain line of work. I think, talking with them and getting their take on what they do and what they like and what they don’t like about it, can shed a lot of light on what you might like and not like about it.

Tex, thanks so much for your time today!