Jon the Software Engineer
Indeed, I’m a software engineer! That’s how it all started.
I grew up enamored by computers and technology, but always at what I would now call a ‘user’ level. Advanced user, maybe, but always poking around the settings of applications, learning how to build computers (well, PC’s anyway), and tinkering with system configs. I found a lot of joy and refuge in technology as I grew up. The puzzle of it all never ceased to fascinate me. I’ll never forget my first hand-me-down laptop: a circa-2005 Sony Vaio… that I accidentally stepped on the screen of a year later (😭). Or my first desktop machine that I saved up for months to buy: the Dell Inspiron 530.
I loved that machine to pieces. It was my first real piece of technology — I owned it! And I used it all the way through my freshman year of college. It ended up getting replaced with a MacBook Pro in 2013, at which point I recycled the old tower… but I wish I would’ve kept it. So many memories.
Anyway, my real software journey began at Denison in 2013. I’m one of those rare people that knows exactly what they want to major in before they step foot on a college campus (though I don’t necessarily believe that’s a good thing). I went to Denison for computer science and never looked back. Even in my first CS course, writing basic Python scripts that generated boxy images on the screen, I remember loving it. In fact, this is the original screenshot from September 2013 — eleven years ago:
That was some of my very first code ever. Oh the nostalgia..
Computer science at Denison was great. My sophomore year I started an internship with Infor’s CPQ team, Columbus branch (the manager was a friend of the CS department), and stayed with them through my graduation. I learned a ton in those years — the realities of working in the software industry, what it takes to be a legitimately great developer, the value of mentorship, etc. etc. I’ll forever be grateful to that manager, Tim Dunham (a Denison grad himself), who shaped and molded so many of my mindsets around software so early on.
After college I went to Iowa for a couple of years and built .NET applications for Homesteaders Life Company. While the industry of the company usually doesn’t matter too much (unless its product is the software), working in the death industry is a total trip. Homesteaders sells pre-need funeral insurance. In short, “pay for your own funeral before it happens so your family doesn’t have to worry about it”. It’s a positive thing, and a net good for the world, I believe. It’s just an interesting thing to work in that industry. Everyone dies, you know? We need funeral homes and casket makers and all these things… it’s just not something normal folks generally think about on a day-to-day basis 😅.
But as much as I enjoyed that work — and I did! — my heart was in Ohio. I’d made good friends in Iowa and really cut my teeth on software there, but I wanted to go back to where I felt was home. The right opportunity presented itself at the right time as another mentor from my time at Denison had an opening on his team in Columbus… for a Rails developer. And a Rails developer I was not.
But Scott Walker, another person I’ll always be grateful too, took a shot on me. He figured that I had learned one stack, so I could figure out another. And with that, he gave me the means to move back to Ohio and start a new career path with implications I really could never have dreamed of. I started working on IKE Smart City in October of 2018. I helped to build the software and systems behind these kiosks:
And that was a real blast. Our team was small and that allowed us to build things so quickly, but we also had great relationships with one-another. Just a handful of devs trying to make great software that really helps people. I got to visit multiple cities for release events and get a taste of startup culture for the first time. What a rush!
Ultimately I decided to move on from IKE a little while after the COVID pandemic began, though. I loved the team but I became a bit jaded about the product. I’m incredibly grateful for what that role did for my life, but I decided to move on to new pastures and convert my then-colleagues to simply friends 🙂.
So in January 2021 I started as an engineer for Agent Pronto. And I’ve been there since! We’re another very small shop — only two devs at the moment. But we also aren’t VC-backed / grow-at-all-costs oriented. We fill a particular niche (helping people find trustable real estate agents) and we’re happy staying in our lane. I love my team, I genuinely enjoy the people I work with, and I love the fully-remote life!
I guess that’s a little background on me as a Software Engineer — I write code! Lots of code! Mostly-good code (I hope?)! I’ve been in multiple stacks, given several conference talks, written lots of articles (here on this site and elsewhere) about highly technical topics, and am, at this point, a very senior software engineer. Let’s talk shop!