Qubika
Objective
Senior Software Developer 1 working directly with clients to help build full stack applications to accomplish thier goals in growing their business and developing robust technical solutions.
What I do
Serve as the lead for my team of client-facing software developers, a role in which I manage my team's workload, morale, coordinate client communication and initiatives, plan, architect, and develop full stack applications.
Lessons Learned
While at Qubika I've had the oppurtunity to learn a lot of skills associated with coordinating with developers across a wide spectrum of teams. Qubika's internal developer headcount was ~300 developers. So learning how to ask questions to get to the people who can help with a test was a big lesson.
The client I have been assigned to during my tenure at Qubika has gone from pre-seed funding round to having 10's of thousands of users. This has awarded me with the oppurtunity to see an application go from 0 users to scale and the problems that can arise with that.
Quikserve Solutions
Objective
Worked on a team of 3 developers with the goal of building Quikserve's next generation Point of Sale software.
What I do
On a daily basis I make meaningful contribution to our current project "Next Gen" which is a new Point of Sale software built completely in Rust. My daily tasks mostly involve maintaining our back log of bugs while periodically building out completely new features.
Lessons Learned
Since starting at Quikserve I started working on a React application using TypeScript, then moved to GO for the first time. After working shortly in GO I started working with C#, shortly after the project scope changed, we got rid of the C# code base and moved to a 100% Rust project. Moving between so many different languages in such a short time has been really enlighening to learn how each language and environment works differently.
While at Quikserve I have learned a lot about programming. The largest thing I have learned at Quikserve has been how to be flexible in what environment I work in.
Roundtable
Objective
A micro-network that allows users to keep in touch with friends and family, build a community, plan projects, or more.
What I did
The Roundtable team consists of myself and the designer. Throught out the whole project I have been working side by side with the designer offering input on his initial design. I have been taking his pure HTML/CSS and turning it into functional code with React and connecting it to our GraphQL backend.
Lessons Learned
Working on such a small team to build Roundtable has been really insightful, we're able to complete tasks quickly but we can quickly end up bottle necking each other if we do not communicate properly. On Mission Control I was primarliy a database developer, now that I'm working extensively on the Database and Frontend and I have learned what to look out for and what questions to ask while designing a database. To piggy back off that, I have also learned what kind of information would be crucial for a database designer to know while developing a web application.
Mission Control
Objective
Lambda staff were unable to easily assess project health and did not have an easy way to view notes about projects created by other staff memebers. Mission Control was conceptualized in order to offer them a one stop shop for daily operations.
What I did
Contributed to a team of 5 developers writing a GraphQL backend from the ground up. Myself and one other team member expanded the Frontend of the project by creating a dynamic project view for staff members to quickly skim notes, take meeting attendance, and see team members.
Lessons Learned
Working on Mission Control was my favorite part of Lambda. I learned how to work with new technology (Okta, Apollo, Prisma, Docker) and manage weekly stakeholder meetings. Additionally working with a single team for a two month period offered a lot of insight into conflict resolution and time management when it comes to programing.
Voices
Objective
When I joined the team at Viralsweep I worked closely with the co-founders to come up with a way for users to connect. We developed an in-app network that connects brands, influencers, and agencies who use giveaways to grow their business. I noticed influencers were more than twice as likely to join the network if they filled out a survey first, rather than just a cold email, so we scaled this effort up and created collaborative supplementary content using all of the survey data.
What I did
After creating a plan for Voices, I hit the ground running and reached out to and interviewed upwards of 150+ influencers. Through these interviews I built working relations with these influencers and I was able to recruit them to our network in order for them to partner up with brands in their field.
Lessons Learned
Working on Voices was a key part in my journey into becoming a programmer, it introduced me into different ways of automation and constantly pushed me out of my comfort zone. The whole project lasted about a year before the team (my-self included) decided that Voices and the influencer network did not align with the company's vision. This decision was what ultimately led me to Lambda School and web development in general.
Asgard Gear
Objective
I was in a time of transition during 2015 and had been talking to my new mentor for a few months having mentioned that I wanted to start my own business. My mentor and I got talking and I had an interest in Magic: The Gathering at the time, so we decided to work together and come up with a product in the Trading Card Game field. We then met with an Industrial Designer who had recently been laid off and got to talking and decided to start Asgard Gear creating beautiful deck boxes for MTG players.
What I did
While starting Asgard Gear I was in charge of marketing, supply chain, productions, and assembly. I ran online marketing campaigns on the MTG subreddit. Sourced Walnut and acrylic sheets online, subscribed to a maker space to produce the necessary pieces and then assembled them all together for shipment.
Lessons Learned
I would say that Asgard Gear has been one of the best teachers for me, I learned how to start and run a busniess from the ground up, prototyping, marketing, and supply chain. Being able to try out every aspect of running a buisness is what sent me into marketing and how I ended up at Viralsweep. Then after Viralseep, having to outsource my websites creation for Asgard is another major contributing factor to me now being a we b developer.
