Marty SampsonThe Life of a PolymathMarty’s professional history spans physics, consulting, infrastructure, operations, technology leadership, and founding a company. The useful story is not a list of titles; it is what those chapters taught him about building systems with and for other people.
Marty earned a physics degree, worked as a physics tutor, and taught physics. That background continues to shape how he approaches technical claims: identify assumptions, work from evidence, and be precise about uncertainty.
Early consulting, network administration, database administration, and operations work built a practical understanding of the systems organizations rely on—and of the people who have to keep them working.
As IT director at Jimmy John’s, Marty helped build the IT function while the restaurant network expanded. His reported work included a point-of-sale rollout to roughly 1,000 restaurants, enterprise reporting, an HR system, and PCI compliance. These were team efforts; the value came from building a function that could operate at scale.
Marty later founded 37Metrics. His public projects continue the same thread: connect technical depth with clear operating practices, learn in public where appropriate, and turn ideas into systems people can actually use.
When Marty joined Jimmy John’s as IT director, he recalls an organization with effectively no established IT function. The work was larger than installing technology: it meant helping create a durable capability, with people, priorities, support, and accountability.
A point-of-sale program reaching roughly 1,000 restaurants required repeatability. At that scale, deployment, support, reporting, and operational feedback cannot depend on individual heroics. The lesson is to design the operating system around the technology.
Enterprise reporting matters when it shortens the distance between an operational question and a responsible decision. The useful work is not simply collecting more data; it is creating shared definitions and making the result understandable to the people who act on it.
PCI work reinforced that compliance cannot be a document assembled at the end. It has to influence ownership, access, change practices, evidence, and the way systems are operated day to day.
This account reflects Marty’s own recollection of collaborative work. It intentionally avoids confidential details and does not claim sole credit for team outcomes.
The wider personal context, from physics to craft.
Runbooks and field guides for turning an idea into evidence.