after my undergraduate studies, I had a degree in philosophy. Eso naturally, I wasn't really working. Uh, you know, in that industry I worked in, ah, in in politics briefly. And then I actually opened a medical marijuana dispensary. Uh, I ran that for about four years. Eventually, I sort of got bored. I'm not being in school anymore. So I ended up doing a masters degree in humanities while I was working on and, you know, running the dispensary. Eventually, I ended up selling my shares in that business to my partner. Um, you know, for industry specific reasons, I was just, you know, had had had enough of that for a while and wanted to make a change. I ended up going and working in public sector health care for the state of Colorado while I finished up my master's degree and essentially I reached the end of my career track in in the administrative line that I was working there. I had basically gone as far as I could without some sort of lateral move into another sort of career path. I didn't see anything that I was really passionate or super enthusiastic about. As Faras options for such a lateral move. Ah, friend of mine who had been working at the state had quit about six months earlier to go to touring one of the boot camps here in town on he had loved it and have been encouraging me to do the same. Basically, what happened was I reach a transitional moment where I sold my home where I had been living for the, you know, couple decades and basically just decided it was now or never toe make a leap. So I, um you know, I basically decided now is the time to make a change. I applied to touring when I got in. I had about four months before I could start before the, you know, my available slot began. So, uh, spent that time just sort of preparing and, uh, and doing a little bit of travel At the moment that I had applied to the Turing boot camp. I didn't know anything about really just about computers, even even now, I'm not what I would call an advanced computer user in the sort of consumer and user sense, even though I do write code. But then I had never even opened a terminal. I was terrified the first time I opened a terminal for a pre work assignment that I was gonna like, screw something up in my computer. Andi, even now, that was on Lee 2.5 years ago. Prior to that, I'd never, never even opened to terminal. And yeah, basically, I just committed myself fully to the boot camp. I had saved up and kept in up savings to support myself through the term of the program. And I left myself about three months worth of living expenses in my savings for the job search afterwards. And then I after I had sold my house and been accepted, deterring I quit my job and prepared to, you know, put my nose to the grindstone.

Yeah, well, I'm an individual contributor in my current role, so I I still work in the same position, actually have ah, promotion that becomes active in 10 days. So this that will be my first official sort of title promotion here at this role. But ultimately, my, you know, my sort of responsibilities haven't changed by much. They've incremental up a little. But for the most part, you know, the decisions that I handle handle our implementation level decisions. Generally speaking, we're building out. Ah, fairly robust micro service architectures. So even low level design decisions that I make. I generally try to find consensus on them, At least amongst my teammates. I don't always need a manager's authorization to proceed with a certain pattern or use a certain package, but because we're building out a lot of similar micro services across the board, it really behooves us to work as a team in that respect. So I would say that those were decisions that were trusted to handle, but I don't ever make those decisions, you know, unilaterally, I'm always sort of in dialogue with my team about the best way toe move forward or the best new pattern to use when we're building out a feature, Um, as faras dealing with challenges and things. Um, you know, as in much of life, communication is going to be pivotal. Thio. You know, a role in development, especially in the sort of situation I've just described where I'm pretty much constantly, um, coordinating with my team mates and with at least mid level management right above us without good communication. Um, it's just never going to get off the ground. So it's important to be to be clear, um, to be able to communicate things when they are difficult or uncomfortable without alienating your teammates on just general, healthy communication habits are really sort of what makes things run, okay.these? I had a degree in philosophy. Eso naturally, I wasn't really working. Uh, you know, in that industry I worked in ah, in in politics briefly. And then I actually opened a medical marijuana dispensary. Uh, I ran that for about four years. Eventually, I sort of got bored. I'm not being in school anymore. So I ended up doing a masters degree in humanities while I was working on and, you know, running the dispensary. Eventually, I ended up selling my shares in that business to my partner. Um, you know, for industry specific reasons, I was just, you know, had had had enough of that for a while and wanted to make a change. I ended up going and working in public sector health care for the state of Colorado while I finished up my master's degree and essentially I reached the end of my career track in in the administrative line that I was working there. I had basically gone as far as I could without some sort of lateral move into another sort of career path. I didn't see anything that I was really passionate or super enthusiastic about. As faras options for such a lateral move. Ah, friend of mine who had been working at the state had quit about six months earlier to go to touring one of the boot camps here in town on he had loved it and have been encouraging me to do the same. Basically, what happened was I reach a transitional moment where I sold my home where I had been living for the, you know, couple decades and basically just decided it was now or never toe make a leap. So I, um you know, I basically decided now is the time to make a change. I applied to touring when I got in. I had about four months before I could start before the, you know, my available slot began. So, uh, spent that time just sort of preparing and, uh, and doing a little bit of travel at the moment that I had applied to the Turing boot camp. I didn't know anything about really just about computers, even even now, I'm not what I would call an advanced computer user in the sort of consumer and user sense, even though I do write code. But then I had never even opened a terminal. I was terrified. The first time I opened a terminal for a pre work assignment that I was gonna, like, screw something up in my computer. Andi, even now, that was on Lee 2.5 years ago. Prior to that, I'd never, never even opened to terminal. And yeah, basically, I just committed myself fully to the boot camp. I had saved up and kept in up savings to support myself through the term of the program. And I left myself about three months worth of living expenses in my savings for the job search afterwards. And then I after I had sold my house and been accepted deterring I quit my job and prepared to, you know, put my nose to the grindstone history. Um, okay, so as software engineer at front door, what responsibilities and decisions did you handle there? Well, I'm an individual contributor in my current role, so I I still work in the same position, actually, have ah, promotion that becomes active in 10 days. So this that will be my first official sort of title promotion here at this role. But ultimately, my, you know, my sort of responsibilities haven't changed by much they've incremental up a little. But for the most part, you know, the decisions that I handle handle our implementation level decisions. Generally speaking, we're building out. Ah, fairly robust micro service architectures. So even low level design decisions that I make. I generally try to find consensus on them, At least amongst my teammates. I don't always need a manager's authorization to proceed with a certain pattern or use a certain package, but because we're building out a lot of similar micro services across the board, it really behooves us to work as a team in that respect. So I would say that those were decisions that were trusted to handle, but I don't ever make those decisions. You know, unilaterally. I'm always sort of in dialogue with my team about the best way toe move forward or the best new pattern to use when we're building out a feature, Um, as faras dealing with challenges and things. Um, you know, as in much of life, communication is going to be pivotal. Thio. You know, a role in development, especially in the sort of situation I've just described where I'm pretty much constantly, um, coordinating with my team mates and with at least mid level management right above us, without good communication, Um, it's just never going to get off the ground. So it's important to be to be clear, um, to be able to communicate things when they are difficult or uncomfortable without alienating your teammates on Just general, healthy communication habits are really sort of what makes things run. Okay, Awesome. Okay, so what does software programs, frameworks, models, algorithms, Languages are typically used in a road like yours. It really varies. Eso When I at touring at the boot camp that I attended, I learned to code, um, primarily in Ruby and later in, you know, later on in rails I have some node experience or back end JavaScript. I can write some front end vanilla JavaScript, CSS and HTML. Obviously, we're all part of the program. But here in my current role up front door, Well, when I first got hired, I'm sort of on the on the back end focused portion of my team. So are stacked does include things like react upfront, but I rarely have caused to write any Java script in my role. Sometimes I may jump in on a code review. Um, since then we've expanded a bit and and sort of brought in some We recently acquired a company, So there's been numerous integrations and stuff that have varied our stack a little bit. Primarily. When I started this position, I was writing almost exclusively go our go lane I still do and recently have jumped back into writing primarily go. But we do use we have some node recently have touched back end Well, actually, full stack repose in PHP some back end stuff in python We do use docker we have used especially when I started We were using a lot of mongo DB Right now we're in the process of doing ah sort of pivot with our micro service architecture to primarily my sequel, my SQL, um, databases behind our our go micro services. Um, but for the most part, I think that that, you know, that sort of touches on everything. My job is mostly aside from the PHP and Python aspects, my job is mostly related to things like Docker and go

I mean, I think again, everything everything in especially cross functional communication really just hinges on your own ability to communicate clearly, especially when it comes to non technical roles like product manager um, you know, it just it. It only takes, ah, sort of slightly elevated self awareness to consider what you're trying to communicate and whether you're sort of putting it in a language that someone can understand. Luckily for me, coming from the background, that was primarily academic writing and, you know, philosophical content. I'm fairly used to translating somewhat unapproachable jargon into everyday sort of English for my teammates. I think that, you know, a lot of that came in handy, especially my practice in my past, writing for sort of more of a common audience. But you do need to be careful, especially when your job is highly technical to sort of leave things like acronyms, especially at the door, when you're talking to people and non technical roles, because that kind of jargon can get really confusing really quickly. Even speaking with other Dev engineers, I frequently have to ask them you know what, what a particular what a particular abbreviation might stand for, and we try to make a habit of not using things like abbreviations in our documentation. For instance,