Sidney Tribiana — Year Two Reflection

As Sidney approaches her second year workiversary with Little Taller, we wanted to meet up and see how she has continued to learn and grow a little taller over the past year.

Little Taller: Just a quick recap, tell us a little bit about your position with Little Taller.

Sidney: I’ve been working at Little Taller for two years as a Web Developer. I deal with a lot of front-end HTML, CSS, and PHP. I focus on WordPress websites, and I set up email templates and landing pages within marketing automation systems like Marketo and HubSpot.

Little Taller: Has your position with Little Taller changed any over the last year?

Sidney: It’s hard to think of things from last year. I can barely remember what I ate for breakfast this morning. Last year I was still getting acquainted and settled with the development process. Compared to now, I’m helping interns a little bit more, and I’m giving more guidance to other coworkers who have just joined. I was in that spot where I still needed a little bit of leadership to get stuff done, but now, I’m at a point where Kyle will have me lead someone else in a task or like have them get assistance for me.

Little Taller: What does the development process look like for you?

Sidney: I guess the first thing is to look at the task and see what the ask is — what the client wants, what needs to be done, assess all the possible solutions, and then I pick the best solution to move forward with. If I have any questions, I ask throughout the task, but I usually ask any major questions before I start, so I have the most clarity possible on the project. From there, I make sure my code is updated before I make any changes. After I write the code, I send it over to keyway, and then I have it reviewed internally. If there’s any other questions or changes, I make those, and then they send it over to the client, and if they like it and they’re happy, then we push it live.

Little Taller: In your review last year, you said that your biggest takeaway is that you learned a lot more about development, so what was your biggest takeaway of this year?

Sidney: I learned that things happen, and if it happens, it happens, and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. Like there are some things that you can’t control, and there are some things that you can. It’s important to use your energy where it’s most productive and where it needs to be instead of trying to use your energy on things that you can’t control or can’t handle. I’ve learned to go with the flow and not be so anxious or stressed out about things.

Little Taller: How has year 2 with Little Taller been different from your first year?

Sidney: I think it’s been more productive for me, and I have learned how to be more organized and self-sufficient, especially with Corona going around. Even though there are like physical limits, like how we can’t be at the office, Corona has helped me overcome those limitations and still be like an effective worker.

Little Taller: Do you have any new responsibilities this year? Or new task items that you work on?

Sidney: I’ve started to help out the other developers more. I recently helped out Vidya with building a template for Gainsight, so I showed her all the basic steps to make a template and then made sure everything was working.

Little Taller: What new skills have you learned over the past year?

Sidney: There’s a lot, but also at the same time, I feel like it’s just kind of like blended. I’ve learned a lot more about PHP this year and how to write code through that, which is good because we’ve had a lot of clients recently that use WordPress and have websites, pages, and certain content types that require PHP. I’ve learned how to understand the language more and how to group things within PHP.

Little Taller: So what exactly is PHP?

Sidney: It’s a coding language called “Hypertext Preprocessor.” So, in other words, you can take different like parts of things and then call them on other like pages or other content types, and then it just automatically knows that’s a thing that can be connected. So like if I’m making a website built on PHP and I’m saying at the very top of the page “get the footer,” PHP automatically knows what the footer is because I defined the footer.

Little Taller: Looking at this past year, what accomplishments are you most proud of?

Sidney: I don’t know there’s been a lot that I’ve done. I might have said this like in the last interview that I did, but probably ASU. I’m just glad that I overcame that whole thing. I also learned a lot about Drupal while working on that project. That was a big hurdle from last year, but for 2020, working on Gainsight’s website has been fun for me.

Little Taller: I was going to see what project you’re most proud of, but I’m guessing it’s the ASU project.

Sidney: Probably, yeah.

Little Taller: What exactly did you do on that project?

Sidney: ASU wanted a new website that showcased the four or five campuses/innovation zones, basically the ASU facilities for students to learn and do things. The site was built on Drupal, another content management system, like WordPress, so it was a little bit of a learning curve to understand how Drupal works and how to build a website. For this project, we had to build the entire website like from scratch, and we had to refer to their sites already made since we didn’t have any documentation on how they develop their sites. There were a lot of changes from the client that were requested, so it took a lot longer than usual to build the site, but it turned out pretty great.

Little Taller: What projects would you like to get involved in more?

Sidney: I want to learn software dev or maybe built-in application. I mostly focus on the web, so I want to start to dive in a bit more into actually building applications and software.

Little Taller: What do your goals for year 3 look like?

Sidney: Probably keep on developing, helping clients, and being kind of like a middleman where they can have a successful business through our development.

Little Taller: What was the hardest obstacle or project you had to overcome this year?

Sidney: In general, knowing how to adjust during the pandemic. It wasn’t that big of an adjustment for Little Taller since we are remote workers in a remote business, but getting used to that whole kind of change of events. I learned how to be more efficient at home and recognize the time where I need to work versus the time where I can relax. I like separating work from home, even though I work at home.

Little Taller: So looking to the future, what are you looking forward to in the next year?

Sidney: I think I’m most excited to see just where we end up as a company. We’ve grown a lot like since I started here, and you can’t tell what the future holds, like who we end up helping and who we build for.

Little Taller: Do you have specific types of clients that you want to work with?

Sidney: I liked working with clients like Allbound and Gainsight, but I also want to work with smaller clients, like HSA or Blue Acorn. So like smaller companies, but like they have a goal, and they’re local. Or companies like Greyson organics that want to emphasize their brand more.

Little Taller: So like startups?

Sidney: Yeah, like they’re still a small business, and they’re still trying to like put themselves out there. It’s cool that we get to have an opportunity to help them out in that area, and we get to see their business come to life.

Little Taller: What advice would you give to incoming developing interns that are about to embark on their Little Taller journey?

Sidney: Ask questions if you don’t know something. Ask ASAP because the longer you wait to ask, the more confusing it gets. It’s good to clear everything upfront and get the necessary details that you need to be successful. I would also say, don’t be afraid if your code breaks, don’t be afraid to make mistakes, and don’t be afraid to work on something. When I first started, I would always be cautious about the certain code that I would touch or the templates that I would use because I don’t want to break it. Don’t be afraid to look around and see what’s going on because you’ll start figuring out how things work, and then you’ll carry that knowledge to work on other things.

Little Taller: If you could go back in time, what is one thing you would do differently with Little Taller?

Sidney: I don’t think I would do anything different. I feel like there is a reason for what you do. There’s also a reason that you don’t do certain things. You always have the chance to reflect on what you did and learn from those situations. The things I learned back then, I’m able to reflect on and improve on now, and the things I’m doing now, I’ll be able to reflect on in the future and continue to improve. Every time I hear a question related to that, I always think of the butterfly effect, and if I did something different back then, would I have ended up in the situation now? Or how would that look different? I don’t know, that’s just how my brain works.

Little Taller: If you could have dinner with anyone in the world, who would it be and why?

Sidney: Oh, that’s interesting. I have a laundry list of people in my head, but I think right now, it would probably be my best friend. I have not seen her since the pandemic started and her birthday was recently, and she didn’t get to have a birthday party. I also miss her in general.