Intern Spotlight #4: Donald Morton
Donald is sprucing up our website and improving the front-end of our app. Read his interview below! 🕹👟🤑
“Being able to have a direct impact on what the users see means a lot to me.”
Name
Donald Lee Morton III
What’s your role at Pluto?
I am currently a Front End Developer Intern at Pluto. Being able to have a direct impact on what the users see means a lot to me.👨🏻💻
School / Major
Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) / Software Engineering
What are you currently saving for?
Boosted Board. I have the version one right now, but seeing people with the second model really makes me want to dig into my wallet and pick up the second one.
What’s your go-to Pluto challenge?
Stop buying sneakers and clothes… I am a huge sneakerhead and my wallet is begging me to get over a lot of the big name brands in fashion. 👟💸👟
Tell us a fun fact about yourself.
I can barely draw a stick figure with pen and paper, but with a computer and a mouse I can make whole worlds that live in my head come to life. Finding out that I had some type of artistic knack really proved to me that anyone can get into it if they put their mind to it!
What activities are you involved with at school?
I am a part of the SSE (Society of Software Engineers) at RIT. This is basically just a group of people at school that come together and make things for fun. Hackathons are a big part of my life as well, I have spent hours slaving away at hackathons at on campus and at campuses around U.S! I also attend the frequent smash club meeting 🎮 — Super Smash Bros. Melee (yes, this game still exists). Melee is a huge hobby of mine and Doctor Mario is definitely my guy.
Why did you decide to intern at Pluto?
Having a few projects of my own (some of which were companies) has been pretty fun. However, ever since freshman year of high school, I told myself and people that asked, my dream was to work at a startup in the Bay Area.
Working for a startup usually means you will have a big impact on whatever you are working on (due to it being a new company). This truly matters to me because as I said earlier, having this direct impact on users is important to me. It makes the work I am doing really meaningful and quite rewarding.
What is the most challenging part of your job?
Even with years of front end web development experience, I have to admit — CSS is the bane of my existence 😭. There is always something that decides to not align which usually causes everything to look weird, or even worse causes other items to come out of order themselves.
What’s your favorite part about working at Pluto?
For those who know me, I have a slight obsession with space 👨🏼🚀. A huge reason why I was so adamant about getting a position that has to do with design for Pluto is that working with a company whose theme is space really thrilled me. This yearn to work with space-related products, along with the fact that I get to see first hand how a startup is run, takes the gold for my favorite aspects that come along with working at Pluto.
