About My Tech Background
To learn even more about me and how I work, please check out the below video (07:55). Because I am a developer more than a filmmaker, I'm of course most excited to show off the custom video player I built, which features captions, chapters, volume and playback speed controls, and social media sharing in addition to standard video controls. I also transcribed the captions!
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About Me!
I am an experienced software engineer seeking a position post-layoffs at SoFi. My experience includes some in insurtech as well as in the fintech spaces, with direct experience in invest, credit card, and accounting engineering experience as well as building new features for & taking care of existing customers in the insurtech space.
I am incredibly enthusiastic about tech, which you can see from comments about me from my former colleagues at SoFi and at Lambda, here under Recommendations. I read and studied over 20 tech books last year, and have read & studied eight already this year as of February 3, 2024. I am a go-getter, self-disciplined, and I take ownership over everything I work on.
I bring a diverse background to the table. In my past, I've done lots of different things; worked in retail, customer service, as a project manager @ Kinkos, run a news department for a gaming league with a readership of over 500k, and had a book published as well as articles featured on the front cover of Massive and Computer Games Magazines.
I am a leader by example, even when I am doing things for fun. For a year and a half, I belonged to a guild in World of Warcraft which was 25th in the U.S. out of upwards of 10,000 guilds to clear Sunwell Plateau, and was present for and participated in each and every boss kill. I was known for combat log analysis and helped mentor junior raiders by deeply analyzing logs and collaborating with other guildies to help juniors improve their rotations.
I owned and operated my own court transcription business for 13 years. My company's transcripts were truly unique and had features that none other did. For several years of owning my business, I developed software using VB and MySQL to automate a large chunk of it, and then wrote a few blog posts describing how to do some of the things I did. The software integrates with Word, Excel, Publisher, Outlook, Express Scribe, FTR Player, Acrobat, Wunderlist, and Paypal, among others. I built a speech recognition engine using batch files and PocketSphinx, and then integrated that engine into my database. I cleaned up and automated feeding all the data (audio and transcripts) so it could learn. I loved doing all that so much that, when I found Lambda, I knew what I needed to do.
During Lambda, I:
- had over `1,200` hours of hands-on development/coding time.
- presented product vision and release canvasses for approval to the product owner.
- gave presentations on supplemental content to teach students how to build certain apps.
- on the side learned Java, TypeScript, Docker, UML, advanced Postman, advanced Agile methodology, PowerShell, advanced VB, system design, scalability, and object-oriented design patterns.
- received 14 references/recommendations while at school, seven on LinkedIn and seven more via Searchlight, a third-party service which hides nearly all the recommender's content from the recommendee to promote candor, which can be sent on request via e-mail.
- had over 5,900 GitHub contributions over 2019 to 2020.
- studied data structures and algorithms, CTCI, and Leetcode on the side for many, many hours.
For six of the nine months at Lambda, I went to school 40 hours a week, served as team lead in the evenings 16-20 hours per week, and ran my business in between. In July 2020, I graduated from Lambda. As always, I will take my attitude, discipline, empathy, respect, problem-solving ability, teamwork, and grit with me wherever I land.