this is not my story

stuff i do

Below is a more elaborated version of my “work experience” on my resume. Mostly focusing on the interesting stories that I accrued working at the different companies, and what stuck out to me the most about each experience.

subsplash

Working at Subsplash is like flying through clouds of awesomeness. Our studio accommodates over a hundred different ministries and faith-based organizations, providing software solutions that are innovative in both design and engineering. Our aim is to glorify Jesus with everything we do. That means while we hold ourselves entirely accountable to the contract of the client, we are doing things for the glory of Jesus, executing our best work with the greatest humility.

At Subsplash I am responsible for Windows engineering (although my official title is “app ninja”). Whether that means working on the Windows Phone or the Windows Platform, I’m the man behind the code, behind the project.

Before I was working on the Windows platform in all of it’s various manifestations, I dealt with a lot of our server technologies. This involved heavy SQL and PHP engineering surrounding our Analytics platform, as well as our pseudo-content-management system. Before I was working on that, my responsibility was taking on half of the support that we took on. It is a pleasure working in all of these aspects, and incredible to talk with our clients who are affected most by our products. Working in all three areas has given me a unique perspective over the company’s process on a whole, one that I truly enjoy, and am truly humbled by.

Our studio is full of coworkers who have a heart for pursuing humility that is only matched by their hunger for perfection in all that they do.

salon sense media

While I was still a barista (see below), I pursued some free-lance web development. I didn’t get a whole lot of business, mostly due to my lack of experience, and partly due to my schedule as a full-time student and a full-time barista.

Nonetheless, I found a job converting a complicated and multi-layered .PSD file into a website. This was the first time that I worked with a graphic designer to develop something. There was a little bit of design / functionality back and forth between the two parts of the project, but all working towards the culmination of the best work we could produce.

I’m proud to say we completed the project, but I have to say I’m disappointed it wasn’t done sooner. A more seasoned web developer would have finished it sooner and with much cleaner code. (Don’t get me wrong… my code works and the site as I left it worked on all the big browsers, it’s just the code looked pretty gnarly).

The Salon Sense team was great to work with. They were really patient and flexible with me as I was again still a student full time, and had a second full time job.

starbucks

Everyone and their sister works or has worked at Starbucks, or a Starbucks competitor. No exceptions.

I loved working at Starbucks. I got to talk to all kinds of new and interesting people everyday. The work was simple, but not easy… if that makes sense. It’s not complicated to mop floors, clean dishes, make drinks, it’s phenomenally simple work. However, it is VERY VERY HARD. There were many days where I was past the point of exhaustion and had entered the stage of hilarity most ascribe to alcohol intoxication. Nonetheless I enjoyed it.

I had many memorable experiences there, one of which involved the current CEO of Microsoft, Steve Balmer. He was a frequenter of the Starbucks I worked at (still is I believe), and would come in. He would order an Iced Venti Black Tea with no sweetener, and two to three cinnamon chip coffee cakes. Before we could get him his tea he would have finished all three cakes. Pretty impressive. I have to say though, that he is one of the nicest customers we had. Sure he was always busy, always stressed I bet. But whenever he came to the front of the line, if he was on his phone, he would apologize, berate himself for being so rude, ask us how our day was, and make his order. And lemme tell you, he would tip well.

I remember one day when bing.com got launched, I just said to him after he ordered… “hey… I just changed my default search engine”. It was met with such a huge grin and a hearty laugh. Loved it.

At Starbucks you have to do something very interesting, and only people who can act (I emphasize act) humble. You get bitchy customers. That’s the nature of the food service industry. And while some people do, you don’t effectively exact revenge upon a rude customer by giving them decaf when they asked for caffeinated, or visa versa. You don’t get back at them by somehow messing up their order again or complaining about them when they leave. You get back at them by saying whatever it is that will make them want to come back, and open their wallets, and give money hand over fist to you and your company. Often that thing, that solitary sentence as I imagine it, is the last thing you want to say or do. But if you pull it off, you have pulled off the most perfect and most lasting revenge, the customer’s continued willingness to pay for your product.

I do have quite a lot to say about working at Starbucks, I enjoyed it quite a bit. One last thing before the break though… I worked in Bellevue at both stores that I was at (the one inside Bell Square and the one next to See’s Candy and Pasta Company). And the area is drenched with tech people. While I was working there I had long since committed myself to the world of technology, and so was well versed in the latest and greatest tech, regardless if I knew how to use it, I knew what was going on. I made sure to keep up on the news because I worked at Starbucks. You see, about 60% of our customers were in the tech industry. All I had to do in order to have a fascinating discussion about technology that was probably confidential at either Microsoft or Valve, or Amazon was ask them how their day was at work and what it was they were working on. If I could respond with some insightful questions and engaging thoughts on the topic, their amazement would usually lend them to talk more about what they were probably contractually obligated not to talk about. It was certainly a privilege to work there. As an added note, nothing is more humbling than working in food service industry, taking all the garbage people give you, and cleaning the bathrooms. But such a fun job.

microsoft

When I was in highschool I had the privilege of working with the test team on IE8. The high school interns were not expected to be able to do much coding, or really much of anything. Each intern was delegated work based on their abilities, and goals set jointly by the interns mentor and manager (and honestly the managers were so busy that the mentors became the de-facto managers).

Having an above-average level of experience for a high schooler however, I had the unique opportunity to develop test cases for some of the new features in IE.

More importantly I got a glimpse into the corporate culture at Microsoft (something that wasn’t entirely alien to me, since I had grown up hearing about work from my father). It was fascinating. I learned so much there, so much about process, product design, team work.

While there I would sometimes wander from office to office (again, they didn’t assign massive amounts of work, and part of my job was to learn about the company). I’d go from office to office, chatting with people, generally being as amiable as I could, hoping to glean some kind of wisdom about how to succeed in Microsoft’s corporate culture. I got a ton of great feedback from people who really cared about how I did. It was amazing the time I had there. My internship got extended for another month, much to my exuberance.

And at the end of the internship, I got to give a presentation that I gave to my manager, my mentor, the friends I had made in the team, and the man in charge, Jason Upton himself, the head honcho over at the IE team.

Great times were had there. Loved every minute of it, and someday I hope to return.

bellevue christian school

This job marked my entrance into the world of professional developer. Nerd-for-pay. I loved it.

During the school year I became aware that the school hired students to do various tech work during the summer. Furthermore that the work was paid. I knew some of the people who worked there (still do!) and I figured that I could throw myself into the ring to see if I could get a job. I had very little programming experience under my belt. It was VB.NET that I knew.

I sat down with Cliff Otis, and he explained to me that the admissions department at the school arranged all of the information for incoming students and their families in an excel spreadsheet. He told me that it was a pain, and yielded a ton of mistakes, which meant a poor experience for incoming families. He told me they needed a program that would run on the servers using PHP and MySQL to store all the information for the students and be displayable for the administrators.

After he was done explaining things… I was a bit lost and confused. But I was determined. Not know with PHP and MySQL was, I told him that was something I think I could do by the summer.

So from then until the summer I took up learning PHP and MySQL, and by summers end I had a fully functional CRM database set up for the department to use. It was used for a few good years after I left, and had a very interesting reporting tools that were used to measure the successfulness of some of the admission tactics, like which campus open houses were held at, or what time interviews were best made.

I learned the most at this job. And years later, even know, I’m “officially” learning some of the things I taught myself in this job. Sometimes I’ll run over something in some textbook on advanced database design, and I’ll say “oh! look! I’ve been doing that!” and then I learn about why it was good I did things that way. More frequently though, I read something and say “Damnit! If I had done things that way it would have worked so much better!”. Oh well, all in all, this job was probably one of the greatest factors of my decision to jump into the field.