#forblog

Link us to something you’ve built (at least part of) that you’re proud of. What aspects of it did you work on? What’s cool or unique about it?

I’ve worked mostly on internal tools for clients and my employers, but one I can link to is a R&D project (https://www.internships.com/roe )from Chegg to help students figure out their next steps. The app allows them to enter a college/university and a major to see what they can expect after graduation. It further lets them narrow the results down by cities that past graduates have moved to or by the job positions that they now hold. Being an R&D project, the data seems a bit lacking in my experience, but the idea behind this app is very interesting to me. It felt good to work on something to (theoretically) help people during a confusing and overwhelming moment of their life. I worked on the React and state management side of the project and worked nand-In-hand with the designer and the API tean

Briefly tell us about a controversial engineering decision that you’ve made or fought for. How did things turn out?

I typically pick pretty boring technical decisions. One that might fall into this category is that during the time of “everyone must use Redux to manage state”, I decided to buck the trend and use React Context since that’s what Redux used behind the scene. There were times when I thought we might have to convert to redux, but we always figured out a way through it. The main problem we ran into were rerendering issues, but with a combination of inspecting the react hierarchy in the chrome React extension and the “Why-did-i-render” plugin (I think that’s what it’s called), we were able to get through it. Everything turned out just fine. Just some learning bumps along the way.

What’s something that you would like to learn more about in your field?

This is hard to answer. I’m always looking for tips and approaches to do things better in Rails and Postgres. I’ve been using these tools for about 15 years now and I still come across different approaches and it’s great. I don’t know if there is an area (like machine learning ) I want to learn more in. For me, it’s more of a “let me get a little better each day” than a specific area. That said, in my free time I’m usually reading a book on adjacent topics books suchs as “Accelerate”, “User Story Mapping”, “Crucial Conversations”, and “Thanks for the Feedback”. While I have a long history building apps, at this point I’m more interested in what it takes to build strong performing teams that feel safe and heard

What are the top 2 Unreasonable values that speak the most to you + why? You can find our values at Unreasonablevalues.com

1. Family and Health First. I can’t tell why without getting personal for a minute. I’ve lost both parents and my older brother. I’m older now than both my mom and older brother when they passed. I know first hand just how important family and health are.
2. We > I. I firmly believe and have experienced that we’re better together. It’s such a great feeling to look at something the team made and think “there’s no way I helped make that”.

What are 2 websites/apps that you find inspiring, and what parts of them stand out for you?

I’m kind of enthralled with excalidraw.com because it’s such an easy to use drawing app that I’ve been using to get coworkers and myself to visually explain what we mean when discussing complicated things. I find visuals help get us on the same page with a shared understanding An app I’m absolutely in love with is Obsidian. It saves everything in markdown - important because you’re not locked-in like EverNote or OneNote. I take a lot of notes and I like to include images and screen shots and whatnot. When you drag an image into a note it copies the file into a local directory and embeds the markdown link to the image. That’s just one simple thing that doesn’t sound impressive, but it’s these little details that make me love it. I think it’s developed by only 2 or so people and they have regular releases which just makes it even more impressive

With 20 years experience, I’ve been at this for a long time. I’ve been on and off Elixir projects over the last few years and I’m very interested in diving into it more than time and current opportunities allow. So in full transparency, I may be considered weak on the elixir/phoenix front, but I have 15 years of using Ruby on Rails, which highly influenced Phoenix. While I was a consultant, I had to learn it fast enough to teach my clients and stay “a day or two ahead” while we rebuilt their system. So, even though I might be considered light on experience for that particular skill, I still have a lot to offer. I know how to focus on the current goal and I prioritize shipping working software that is valuable. I’ve run products and projects for a long time, I understand the decision making that goes into making them successful, and I care deeply about understanding the customer and what they value. I do my best when I am involved “in the big picture” and not just a cog in the wheel. If it sounds like I can be of service to you, please reach out! Thanks!