Lead Mobile Developer at LegalShield http://forge42.com What made you decide to work in tech? I’ve always been drawn to programming, ever since I was 13. I remember I used to spend all my time reading as many programming books as I could to build my own games and simulations. This idea of being able to manipulate and create new experiences fascinated me. So I knew I would pursue some sort of engineering education. In high school, one of my teachers, Mr. Tom Guarino, always
Software Engineer Intern at Microsoft What made you decide to work in tech? Growing up, I played video games non-stop with my brothers and it always fascinated me how reality could be recreated virtually. As a kid, I remember telling myself that if I did not make the NBA as a pro athlete I wanted to be a programmer and be around computers and/or video game production. Nonetheless, I unexpectedly ended up in the tech field late in my college career. As I was going into my junior year as
You seem passionate about your job. Oh, yeah. I love Slack. Slack is the greatest place ever! I feel like when I am not at Slack anymore (I don’t see that happening anytime soon) this [will be] my last job in tech. I’m not going to go anywhere else. I don’t think it gets better than here. Why is that the case? The team here is great. People here are really good people. I’ve worked other places where the people I was working with weren’t real people. You know what I
iOS Software Development, Training, and Coaching So, what made you decide to work with technology? Well, I got interested in computer graphics. If it weren’t for computer graphics I probably wouldn’t be doing anything with computers. I’m one of these hybrid design/tech type people, and it all came together with computer graphics. It’s programming, it’s visual, you have to think about a range of things and they all have to come together otherwise you don’t really have a solution. How was your time at Apple? Apple was amazing.
How did you start, or what made you decide to work in tech? I was 7 and my mom got our first computer, and she was showing me the stuff she did at work because she was in combat plans at the Air Force so she used to have to use Basic to do stuff. When we moved to Alaska, the people at my school knew I liked computers and I was in the gifted program, so they said, “Here, we’re going to send you off to this thing down
Product Manager of Venmo What made you decide to work in tech? Well, at the time I decided 4 years ago I wasn’t sure what to do, so I decided to start following a few of my passions. One was Vgames–so in a sense, learn how to code. I also did something called Learn Python the Hard Way, from James Shaw, and from then I realized I wanted to do something in tech. A half year later, an opportunity presented itself at FemRow. A high school friend that I
What made you decide to work in tech? The short answer is that it was a financial opportunity for me. When I first started, I really didn’t understand what a software engineer did or was. I was just happy to be graduating from college with a pretty decent salary offer. But tech/software development was a natural fit for my curious personality. The technical challenges of building software appealed to the problem solver in me. What was an obstacle you faced and how did you overcome that obstacle? As a software
What made you decide to work in tech? My mom was super controlling when it came to going on the internet. She used to set this AOL feature where it limited the time the child account was allowed to use the internet each day. My two other siblings and I had to share one hour of internet per day and it was horrible. My childhood consisted of modding the Sims, customizing my Myspace page, and figuring out how my older brother always bypassed the internet timer and parental controls. I played
What made you decide to work in tech? Coming into college, I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to major in. I knew I wanted something that blended science and art, but I didn’t know what that something was. An advisor suggested CS, but it didn’t seem like anything I wanted to do. That summer I had an internship at Sandia National Labs, and I was exposed to web development. I took to it immediately, but the extent of what I could do was limited by the fact that I
This is a special episode of POCIT featuring former Twitter Engineer Leslie Miley. Please read his enlightening essay on Medium regarding Twitter’s lack of diversity, and how it informed his decision to leave a senior engineering position at the company. What made you decide to work in tech? I have what I call home field advantage. I was born and raised in Silicon Valley {laughs}. You couldn’t walk out the door without getting hit by a computer. It always fascinated me, I watched Steve Jobs as a kid, and witnessed
