QuarkWorks: Meet the Team Series — Alexander Beattie
This month we would like to introduce one of our amazing software engineers who is approaching his one year anniversary with QuarkWorks!
Name:
Alexander Beattie
Role:
Software Engineer
When did you join QuarkWorks and what led you to take on this position?
I joined QuarkWorks in January 2020. What stood out to me about QuarkWorks was how interested the company was in enabling me to work on projects that piqued my interests and facilitating my growth as a developer.
What excites and energizes you about the company?
I’m excited to be part of a team where we can learn and try new things. If I have a new idea, the atmosphere at QuarkWorks allows me to talk about it, experiment with it, and if it works, move it forward. Through this, I’ve grown and learned more about many areas of development: DevOps, CI/CD, GatsbyJS, etc. Working every day knowing that I’m constantly learning, trying new things, and solving new challenges energizes me and makes me enjoy what I do.
What has been your favorite project to work on or are currently working on?
My first project at QuarkWorks involved updating the CI/CD pipeline for a product called TryNow. What initially started as a small CI/CD update turned into a complete deployment system overhaul. I created a new deployment system using docker, AWS ECS Fargate, and Gitlab CI. I loved the collaborative workflow and autonomy to create an innovative solution during this project. It was incredibly rewarding when it took 30 minutes to go live with the new hosting and deployment system with zero-downtime.
Advice you would give someone working at a startup?
Do it. I was a bit hesitant at first to come to a startup since I had interned at a medium to large-sized company previously. Working at a startup pushed me out of my comfort zone and allowed me to grow as a developer and an individual.
What do you enjoy doing outside of work?
Outside of work, I enjoy anything adventurous. Through Boy Scouts I fell in love with the outdoors and love biking, hiking, repelling, and anything else adrenaline pumping I can get myself into.
What’s your biggest screw up in the kitchen?
One summer at Boy Scout summer camp at Spanish Peaks Scout Ranch in Colorado, my patrol and I were cooking the hallmark meal of the week: pork steaks, potatoes, and vegetables. One of the new scouts volunteered to cook the pork steaks. Without much thought, I agreed and let him get started. Working with some other patrol member’s I began to peel the potatoes and put on a pot of water to boil. We were particularly hungry and impatient that day and the potatoes had only been boiling in the pot for 10 or 20 minutes. I figured it would be okay to boil the veggies since we couldn’t steam them and we were all hungry. I then began to smell a burnt aroma wafting from the grill.
While I had been focused on the potatoes and vegetables, I had neglected to supervise the new scout cooking the pork steaks. When I went to the grill I saw they were zealously seasoned and charred to a crisp. We pulled them off the grill and onto a plate, trying to salvage what remained inside the charred outer shell. The 40 minute mark hit and I started to mash the potatoes (without draining the water). The vegetables were bland and soggy since they had been boiled and the mashed potatoes turned into a watery mess. I tried to drain out the water from the potato-vegetable-broth mess but the damage had been done. The broth was inedible and while some slivers of pork steak remained we mostly relied on leftovers from other patrols for dinner.
This experience taught me that in life, I will make mistakes. Usually though, those mistakes aren’t catastrophic and can provide a valuable teaching experience. At the end of dinner, everyone had enough food and no one was hungry. Although our patrols meal was a disaster, we all learned from it and built some character along the way.
