Connecting The Dots On My Career So Far
This past week I watched a co-worker give a talk about vapor. The premise was you shouldn’t be so focused on the future because it may not come, you should instead focus on the present and be thankful for what you have. That has made me reflect a few times since on the way I think and this morning I was thinking about my experience as a software engineer and how all of that has played out so far. I can’t say I had a grand plan for most of this, I mostly lived in the moment and did what I thought would be the best at the time while working incredibly hard. Today I wanted to reflect on each job I have had in the technology industry and see how that took me from a student to a senior engineer.
Northern Illinois University
I started out at NIU working as a computer technician. This was one of my first non-retail jobs and it allowed me to see what it was like working in an office environment. Surprisingly it was a bit more laid back, I had much more autonomy to make decisions as well. During my time there I was able to learn how to work with other professionals in an environment with fairly relaxed rulesets. My main goal for each day was to work through a backlog of tickets and try to close out as many as possible, towards the end of my tenure as a computer tech I was one of the top closers.
Working as part of the universities IT staff opened the door for me to join the development team on campus when a role was available. This role allowed me to begin applying what I was learning in the classroom in the real world. Thanks to an excellent mentor I was able to gain a deeper understanding of object oriented programming as well as SQL query optimizations that to this day still help me in my day to day life. I owe a lot to the opportunities I had working at Northern Illinois University, I’m not quite sure where my path would have taken me otherwise.
Allstate — The First Tour
After my time at NIU I found myself at Allstate. This was a dramatically different environment which had fairly rigid processes. I found myself working on tuning servers that were running applications in C# which continually would run out of memory. One of my main tasks during this time was to cut down on the memory consumption by reducing the footprint of our logs. The next opportunity I had was learning Tibco, something that still haunts me to this day when recruiters occasionally ask me if I am interested in a position using that software. If anything I can say that my first stint at Allstate gave me a glimpse at the benefits you could have as a professional software engineer. My healthcare package was nice, the 401k contributions weren’t bad, they had a pension program, and most of all I could work from home a few days a week.
Chitter
If you have never had the chance to be employee number one or two at a company you have never lived. This was probably the bumpiest ride of my life which further cemented the idea to always get it in writing and asking questions during an interview is actually important. I failed to ask the founders how much runway they had for their startup, I had no idea how they planned to make money, and overall I think I was just excited to be an Android developer with limited oversight. During my time working there I had to repeatedly remind them to pay me as they would forget every two weeks. I learned about the value of the government when I had to submit complaints about them not paying my taxes while making me think they were. As horrible as it sounds, I learned a lot of valuable and tough lessons working for such a small company.
Ascedia
Working for an agency is something worth trying out at least once in your career. I had a blast working at this company mainly because I was always working on something new. When I first started I mainly focused on some website redesign work for a large client of theirs, but quickly started working on more interesting projects. While I really enjoyed building an inventory tracking system from scratch (I worked on the mobile client while another co-worker built out the backend), I think my favorite project was a recommendation engine built with C# and SQL. The recommendation engine gave me a chance to start collecting various visitor information on a highly trafficked website and surface up other things they might find interesting. Another neat project I was on saw me building a voting platform with a two week deadline, it was incredible just how much could be done in such a short period of time.
I did however discover that overall this wasn’t the type of company for me. While I was able to work on a lot of interesting projects and focus almost 100% on coding, I had to bill 40 hours of work per week. This often made me feel like a butt-in-chair employee because if I didn’t meet my billable hours for the week I was effectively losing the company money. That’s not to say this was a bad thing, I know a lot of people that are very happy with this, and there are a ton of benefits as well… After-all is there any other industry where you can directly tie how much revenue you are directly responsible for bringing in as a software engineer?
Allstate — The Second Tour
My second stint with the company was quite a bit different from the first. At this point I had experience working on a wider variety of projects, I was confident in being able to lead projects, and through working at smaller companies I had a better grasp on what the heck Agile was. During my time here I was able to further cement my understanding of Android development, I gained experience in test driven development, and I found myself in meetings with senior managers, directors, and VPs of organizations. I focused much more on my soft skills along with managing up. I also had the experience of mentoring an engineer out of a PIP and into a lead developer role himself. Ultimately though I grew tired of the office politics and decided large corporate enterprises like this were not the place for me.
Yello
It was at this time I found myself working for a technology startup in downtown Chicago. We were out to revolutionize the recruiting industry by bringing thoughtful software experiences to major Fortune 500 companies. I spent the majority of my time working on Yello Pro which offered a modern way for employees at career fairs to collect information about candidates they were talking with. This company helped me get out of the suburbs and into the city. I was able to flex my experience as an engineer through writing articles on Medium, giving talks at meetups and conferences, as well as help the company focus more on the larger Chicago community. I was able to mentor several other engineers and watch as they continued to grow in their own careers. It was a great experience and really helped cement my belief that bigger isn’t always better and working at smaller companies where I can have a big impact is something to be excited about.
ActiveCampaign
I have been with this company for almost 9 months now and it seems crazy to say that because it legitimately feels like I just joined. In my time with the company so far I have had the experience of building up an Android team (myself and another co-worker started on the same day as the first Android devs) which is rather humbling. I was able to help define our development workflow and watch the CI and release process be implemented to perfection by my co-worker. I’ve been able to watch the team grow from 2 developers to 3, then to 4, and now we’re releasing new features every 2 weeks with 5 engineers contributing.
Working at ActiveCampaign has also given me a glimpse into what it feels like to work for a company with fairly luxurious benefits, while this isn’t Google or Facebook, most days it sort of feels like it. We have a fully stocked kitchen where I never worry about paying for snacks or coffee (espresso, regular, or cold brew, it’s all there for free). I don’t worry about getting lunch, and the $12 daily stipend usually covers the entire cost. My healthcare premiums (along with vision an dental) cost me a whopping $0 every pay period, and their 401k match has been vested since day one. Oh, and every employee gets a motorized sit/stand desk along with their monthly CTA or Metra pass paid for. The company has removed the majority of financial stresses from my life which has allowed me to focus on building great products for our growing small business customers.
I would be lying if I said I planned this all out. I can’t say I know where I’m heading next in my career, although I have some vague short-term goals I would like to achieve. I think one thing has been constant for me, and that’s my general focus on doing great work and making sure the next thing I work on is more challenging than the last.
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.
— Steve Jobs
Thanks for taking the time to read through my article. If you found something to be not quite right or have other information to add please reach out in the comments section below. If you enjoyed this article, please click on the clap icon a few times or share it on social media (or both). Lastly, I’m starting up a mailing list that is powered by ActiveCampaign, if you want to get weekly newsletters then please use the sign-up form below.
