As a Denver, Colorado native it was only natural to spend a season obsessed with snowboarding the beautiful Rocky Mountains. My lifelong friend Elias, our buddy Josh, and I would occasionally get to the bottom of a run, look at each other, and say, “What a ride!” Only one or two rides down the slope a day met all the criteria for such a reaction. The criteria: The ride was recklessly fast, challenging and beautiful. Personally, and professionally, my life has been all those things since my last (and first) blog post six years ago.
Recklessly Fast: Blur Effect
Professionally the ride has been intense. After a short stint at a local agency doing web admin work, I was hired at PR Newswire as a UX Developer. For the first few months I worked on handcrafted responsive press release templates. It was not long until there was a need for someone to work on the UI/UX parts of a huge web application, Agility. At the time Agility’s codebase was all in a .NET MVC framework and since I had some experience working inside Visual Studio and was familiar with C# views and razor syntax, I volunteered. The past five years I have spent nearly all of my working hours contributing to Agility. I have been in a state of metamorphosis. Agility being my cocoon. Upon entering I was an aspiring web developer muddling with WordPress theming, HTML, CSS, UX/UI design and small amounts of JavaScript. I emerged as an application Engineer that contributed using nearly a dozen languages and frameworks including: HTML, CSS, LESS, SASS, Bootstrap, PrimeNG, JQuery, Underscore.js, Knockout.js, Highcharts, Angular.js, and Angular 2+ and a little C#. I also gained an understanding of UI/UX principles, accessibility, software architecture, writing readable code, accessibility, software design, code organization, and agile methodologies.
On the personal side of life, things have happened at a similarly reckless pace. I married my beautiful wife Kristen. We bought a house in Lakewood, Colorado. And we had two beautiful and busy little girls. They bring us so much joy. Are you pondering if I am crazy to string so many huge life events back to back while starting my career? That’s okay. So am I.
Flying down the mountain on a snowboard as fast as you can cause surroundings to blur. In the same manner, these past six years have given me a similar sensation. I marvel at how six years can feel like one year and ten years simultaneously. I have come so far in my career, as a husband, as a father, and have had immense personal growth. Yet, I have so much more potential to realize.
While I am on the subject of blur… Look at the web, application, and software domains. They have moved so fast towards each other they have blurred together and are quickly becoming one and the same. I have followed the progress of the web fairly closely since beginning high school in 2001. I could not have fathomed what it is and does today. Did anyone?
Challenging: Green to Black
In snowboarding terms, looking back up the slope and visualizing the terrain I traversed, Agility was a black diamond run with moguls. I would have never directed a novice snowboarder with a few green runs under their belt onto such a run. For those who do not snowboard, it was dangerous and an absurdly ridiculous piece of software to learn the fundamentals of engineering and application development on. As my co-worker and friend Zoey put it, “Starting with Agility (or even working with it early on) is a bit like learning to surf on a Tsunami.” There were times I struggled. Questioned if I belonged in the application development world. Being surrounded by engineers with a decade or more experience will make you feel insignificant. Our team built gargantuan features on tight deadlines, utilizing big data. The engineering team was dispersed across several cities in the US and Canada. There was not a culture that prioritized mentorship, collaboration, and intentional employee development.
Here is the real kicker. In the exact middle (to the month) of my time working on Agility, I had to persevere through an acquisition. PR Newswire was purchased by Cision. When the deal was finalized I was informed, due to government regulation, that Agility and my services, were being acquired by a third party, Media Miser (rebranded to Agility PR Solutions). I was devastated. I loved the UX team I had been hired to work on. Of the dozen people on that team only Zoey and myself were being split off. Furthermore, the backend engineers I enjoyed working with the most were not coming either. Neither was our BA or Product Director. Once visibility and stability returned, I enjoyed my time at Agility PR Solutions, but the transition was filled with anxiety and apprehension. Talk about a huge jump with airtime.
During my tenure working on Agility, I was taken up the gondola to the peak of the mountain. Above tree line, with a breathtaking view of what software makes possible, I had to find my way down. I wiped out. A lot. Made mistakes and at times agreed to take on more than I could handle. Sometimes I had to hand off tickets I could not complete. Eventually, I found my edge. Learned to navigate the terrain before me. I have accelerated and the blur is not overwhelming now. I survived, persisted, learned, grew, and believe I have a skill set I can thrive with. At the beginning of my time on Agility, I had no intention of becoming an Engineer and yet here I am. To take the irony further I had the opportunity to take programming classes in high school, but didn’t take them because I didn’t want to become… wait for it… an engineer. And here is the real kicker, I took web design/HTML/CSS classes in high school, and although I loved it, I pursued something else when I went to college. (Rolls eyes at 18 me).
While becoming a husband, father, and homeowner has been so good, it came with challenges. My wife and I both have full time careers. Juggling our careers and children has been taxing. We have to squeeze the most out of every day to get work done, tend to our girls, and keep up on household duties. We hit some hard months. At 18 months our oldest daughter went through six plus months of terrible night terrors. They are different and worse than nightmares. If your child is waking up screaming, thrashing, and is inconsolable, research night terrors and talk to your pediatrician about them. For months we did the exact opposite of what is recommended. As an indication that our youngest daughter has begun cutting new teeth, she spikes a 103 plus degree fever for four to five days. To get her back to daycare my wife or I have to take off of work, schedule a doctor visit, ascertain a note that she is not sick, and update Tylenol and ibuprofen dosage forms. Thankfully she only has a pair of molars left to go. We also traversed the unexpected and emotional health scare of an ectopic pregnancy.
My advice to anyone approaching this life status is to dig deep. You will need all your courage and mental fortitude. Practice effective communication with your spouse. Be ready to sacrifice hobbies and other things you like doing. I haven’t been snowboarding in seven years! Insert super sad frown face here. However, it is totally worth it. Perseverance builds character.
Beautiful: Take It All In
After holding a season pass for five seasons, I felt like an accomplished snowboarder. It took work and practice to be able to tear up black diamond runs. Although satisfying, the best part was the beauty. Beautiful views of snow descending upon pine and aspens. Beautiful experiences carving down new and favorite runs. Beautiful friends to share the journey.
I am delighted I paused, reflected, self-analyzed, and penned this blog post after being laid off on August 21st. It has given me perspective. A moment to appreciate the journey. If you want to check out some amazing and beautiful things I took part in creating, check out my portfolio. You will find a description of my roles and responsibilities on projects, and a brief summary of problems I solved.
I am of the opinion what determines your work experiences are the team members you collaborate with and those who take time to impart wisdom. Starting with the present and working backwards.
Zoey Sherry, Mia Hall, Jarrod Butcher, James Oresti, Diane Vuignier, Tiffany Buckley, John Lawrance, Marc-André Ladouceur, and Alaadin Bayard, the last year of updating Agility, and moving parts of it onto modern technologies has been refreshing. It provided insight into what proper architecture and software development should look like. For the first time in my life I am accepting I am an engineer. I have an aptitude for solving complex problems and want to become a master at it.
From my time at PR Newswire, I’d like to give a huge shout out to the UX team. Erick Collier, Zoey Sherry, Alex Kale, Dan Calise, Chani Elmont, Heather Fails, Leandro Incetta, Anna Cook, and Jane Shin. It was a blast discussing and learning UI/UX on such a talented team. It was challenging taking our decided principles and best practices to numerous products, but I think more enterprise companies should endeavor to standardize their UX. I would also like to thank PR Newswire’s Agility team: Amber Larson, Janelle Seto, Bhavesh Shah, Galina Ribnitski, Stallin Selwyn, Vinh Ngo, and Steven Baggett.
Working at Beyond Diet I’d like to thank: Jeff Siegel, Justin Mastic, David Ternan, Ken Hua, John Ockers, Glenn Johnson, Alli Huff, Philip R. Costantino, Taryn Williams, and Jeremy Walker. During my time working with you I learned to be part of a team working on a unified goal.
Thank you Daniel Nice and Luke Wyckoff for entrusting me with work during my short stint as a freelancer.
My time with the Visioniz crew of Jason Bahl, Matt Jones, Freeman LaFleur, Gina Cascella, and Victor Werner, was the gateway I needed to a career doing web work. Lisa Korsen for introducing me to Jason Bahl.
Brian Warren for taking some time to answer questions from some kid who wanted to do website things. Your book suggestions propelled me to make my first website. Thanks Aaron Orr for giving me your friends email.
Thank you Denver Public Schools for creating the computer magnet program. I’m a success story. My teachers Mark Francis, Stacey Fornstrom, and Eva Horan for teaching me the basics of networking, design, hardware, software, and coding. Skills I use every day. My literature teacher, (editor of this post) Nathan Silver.
My parents have always been instrumental in supporting my endeavors. For my sixteenth birthday they bought me a student license for Macromedia Creative Suite and have never stopped supporting my dreams. Thanks mom and dad.
Lastly to those whom I owe my greatest gratitude. Ryan Carter, thank you for all your guidance and advice over the last decade. I’m elated to finally help you with one of your projects. My brother-in-law Brian Flannery, with whom I converse often about how software teams fail and falsely claim to follow agile methodologies. Jason Bahl, for dragging me into my first venture of doing things in WordPress. You will always be a great friend I can talk code with. A very special thank you to Zoey Sherry, my mentor and closest friend the last 6 years. You always made time to assist me when I needed help or coaching. There are no words to express the amount I will miss working with you.
Stoked: What’s Next?
Stoked is a commonly used word in the snowboarding community. It means extreme excitement. While being laid off is never a good feeling, I needed it. In hindsight Agility was not the best atmosphere for a novice to begin a career. Especially for someone, who at the time, wanted to focus on creating beautiful relatively static websites. While I have survived, and feel I reached the early journeyman status of my career, I have not thrived. Somewhere in the grind of balancing work, family, and responsibilities I lost my passion for learning and practicing design and code. I am not sure what happened. However, after being laid off it took less than a day for me to start dreaming again. All my passion for creating things rushed back.
In my time of reflection, I realized in high school I put a stigma on engineering and programming. It has been my biggest inhibitor to finding and initially growing my career. Back then technology did not allow for great visual design. My artistic side subconsciously sabotaged my other strength of problem solving. It was a blockade to considering a career in software creation. Of course, that has all changed, software is utterly incomplete without visual and UX design. In this moment of clarity, it is finally clear becoming an engineer was always my destiny. As a child I would take apart broken or old electronics attempting to decipher how they worked.
Naturally, I’m not a planner. My wife is however, and she has shown me the value of having a plan. Going forward my intention is to focus on filling my skill gaps as an engineer. As a first step in doing that I will go through Code Complete and the “gang of four” book Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software. If you have any suggestions for a great reads on strategies for solving modern software problems with current technologies, please share.
My strongest passion lies in the development and creation of well thought out and designed ideas. I am looking for a role between, “lines of code and works of art” as I used to say. I care deeply about a team having the time and bandwidth to collaborate. I am looking to work somewhere that values family, community, and contributing to society. A UI engineering role is my current ideal, but I will be looking to acquire full stack knowledge so I can contribute wherever needed. I enjoy mentoring and being mentored. While job searching, I will work on a few side projects to fill the skill gaps I currently have.
I wrote this blog to serve three purposes. First, I needed a place to catalog my journey and recognize how far I have come. Secondly, I wanted to thank everyone who has been part of my journey. Lastly, I want to provide a synopsis of what starting a career in software creation can look like. It is constant change and doubling down on belief in yourself. There is high demand to acquire new skills in a constantly changing environment. While other vocations allow mastery at doing specific things, our mastery comes in the ability to apply learned principles to new challenges every day.
If you are searching for a UI Engineer or similar role you think I might fit, check out my resume and skills analysis. I am stoked and ready to contribute to something new.
