About Me — Mike Scarpiello
A life defined by adventure and not a 9–5 job
As far back as I can remember, I never wanted to be anything. Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher knew they wanted to be comedians when they were in their early teens. I also think it’s more common in the internet age to hone in on a career because you can easily look up job descriptions, companies, or get career advice at the click of a mouse. When I graduated with my Sports Management degree in the late 80s, I still didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do. I pretty much just worked at the job that was in front of me.
Jobs and career paths
After a brief stint in retail, I moved from Cleveland to Orlando and found a job in Data Processing. Data Processing is the term that would eventually become Information Technology, or IT. I worked on IBM mainframes and mounted reel-to-reel tapes on drives connected to the mainframe. Personal computers did not yet exist, and I am part of the last generation that mainly used what were known as “dumb terminals”, or CRTs. It was just a screen and a keyboard connected to the mainframe, and there was no email, internet, or anything else to use it for but work.
After three years in Orlando, I took a promotion and moved to Chicago. I continued with my Data Processing career at Trans Union — one of the three major credit bureaus. In the early 2000s, the internet was starting to take off, so I moved into a job at a digital design company doing software quality control, also known as software testing.
My final career change happened in 2002. After getting laid off during the tech downturn, I decided to go to graduate school, and got a Master’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction. Like almost everything I have mentioned so far, this field also went through a name change. It is more widely known today as User Experience Design, or more simply, Experience Design. This is how Wikipedia defines User Experience Design:
“User experience design defines the experience a user would go through when interacting with a company, its services, and its products. User experience design is a user centered design approach because it considers the user’s experience when using a product or platform.”
In a nutshell, I work on websites and phone apps and try to make them less frustrating and easier to use. I basically create digital blueprints of how things are arranged on a website or app and how they are supposed to function. I currently work at a large e-commerce company as a Senior User Experience Designer.
Travels near and far
I didn’t leave the relative safety of North America until I was 29. My first trip was to East Africa to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. It was a great experience and a friend and I finished the trip with a few days in the Tanzanian state of Zanzibar.
After the trip to Africa, I caught the travel bug. I won’t go into all the details but I have visited 18 countries in total, ranging from Peru, Cambodia, and Thailand to Spain, France, and England.
Here is a quick list of highlights from my travels:
- Running with the bulls in Pamplona
- Hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu
- Climbing five mountains: Mt. Kilimanjaro, Mt Rainer, Mt Hood, Mt Shasta, and Long’s Peak
- Seeing the sunrise at Angkor Wat in Cambodia
- Visiting the beach from the movie The Beach in Thailand
The last international trip I took to Ecuador was nearly a disaster, which I will detail in the next section below.
What I write about
When I first joined Medium I was only writing poetry. Here is my most popular poem to date: Ashes Make the Phoenix Rise.
Soon after that, I started writing stories about my job in Experience Design. There is a whole publication dedicated to my field called UX Collective. Here is the first story I published there: Why Pied Piper Failed and why you should always test with real users.
My first foray into writing about my own life was What It’s Like to Lose a Brother to the Opioid Epidemic. This was a deeply personal story that was hard for me to write, but it was also very cathartic for me.
My last two stories have been about aging and travel. My biggest earning story to date ($60!) was about a flight my wife and I took recently that turned out to be very similar to an episode of Seinfeld. My story My Last Flight With My Wife Was Right Out of a Seinfeld Episode really seemed to strike a nerve with readers, and I got 19 replies to it.
The last story I published was about a travel experience gone wrong. I took a solo trip to Ecuador, and actually gave away my passport to a scam artist at the airport! You can enjoy a sample of my never-ending shame by reading Nothing Builds Character Like Losing Your Passport in Another Country.
I want to tell you one last thing about me and writing on Medium before I sign off. I do not do it for the money. I don’t have enough stories to write about every day, nor the time. I write mainly for my own enjoyment. I definitely enjoy writing poetry the most, but ideas for different topics about my job, my life, and the world do come to me occasionally.
Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you on Medium!
Mike Scarpiello 2024
