More on me
The Fluffy Intro
I've worked most of my life to carve my own path, and each stride is greater than the last. I moved myself out of Southern California up to the Greater Seattle Area in November 2016 with nothing more than my car, clothes, and my computer. Since then I've found myself with the determination and skills to properly take on the challenge of meaningful career advancement while still young, having experience already working with Microsoft for a short time, then learning the necessary skills to start my career in Web Development. With a perfectionists drive and a desire to forge measurable progress, I'm looking for the next opportunity where I can make meaningful breakthroughs, amelioration, and growth.
The Short Enough Professional Summary
Out of Highschool I knew that I couldn't afford to go to school, so I wanted to work. I moved out at 18 to Temecula, CA, where I found my first job at a local grocery store. Even though I started out as a bagger with no experience, I worked extremely hard and earned myself a promotion to the Deli within two months. After working at the store for almost a year, I moved to a slightly less paying job working at the local Uncle Bob's Sports Bar as a dishwasher, just so that I could have a full 40 hour work week. Working through the first couple of months of the increasingly popular restaurant I managed to earn my spot for when the slower spring and summer came, and they let go the other more tenured dishwasher. When I expressed wanting to move to Washington State to pursue working in IT, my boss, recognizing my hard work, invested in me by paying for my CompTIA A+ certification, knowing I was bound for bigger and better things.
I spent the rest of 2016 self studying for the A+ Cert exam, and working towards my goals to get me into Washington by the end of the year. Despite a major car related setback, I was able to finally land in Shoreline Washington by November at 20 years old. Within 2 weeks of landing, I managed to secure a job at Amazon for Prime Now, fulfilling two hour delivery orders over the Winter into Spring of 2017. By then, I ran into more hurdles, when my old car finally bit the dust, leaving me with no money, and making me fall behind signing up for shifts with Amazon. Looking for a more reliable line of work more aligned with my A+, I made efforts to look into a new job Come March, I had finally landed a gig in tech as a QA Tester at Pole To Win International, bug testing video games! I made myself as available as possible, and after a few off and on short test cycles, I managed to work myself onto the larger full time project in the building. With word that the project was going to end come October, I started looking once again for my next stepping stone opportunity.
On a whim I applied for an IT position, which turned into my first big time opportunity in the way of a short contract position working with TEKSystems at Microsoft for 343 Industries (the makers of the Halo video game franchise). In the short time I was there, I worked as diligently as I could, and was introduced to a much more expansive set of roles from the people I met there who worked in IT DevOps. Coding was always on my radar but felt out of my reach, but talking with my coworkers there opened my eyes and inspired me to actually pursue it further. There was a local coding bootcamp that was set to start right as my contract ended, so I decided to lend myself to the oppotunity and jump in. The Coding Dojo was a 14 week long Full Stack Web Development bootcamp, that went from the ground up teaching coding basics and algorithms all the way up until we were able to complete a full front end/back end website from wireframe to complete in 5 hours, and deployed online by the end of the day. I personally spent well over 60, sometimes even 70 hours a week crash coursing 3 different programming languages over the duration, consisting of Python, with Flask and Django, the Javascript based MEAN stack, and C#'s ASP.NET Core Framework. Every 4 weeks we had an exam, and in each of the 3 languages, I scored in the 90th percentile.
After graduating in late June, I tried applying every which way, hoping to land my first job in industry. By Fall, I had run out of funds and needed to find any work ASAP. I took a job working with Keywords Studios for Riot Games, as a Technical Player Support Specialist for League of Legends, but by the time on boarding ended, I was just shy of their cutoff, and was unfortunately let go in late November. Not too soon after, I was recommended a contract working with Nintendo of America as an Associate Product Tester. I started at the position in the beginning of January 2019, working up until the end of February once again. Since March 2019, I've been on another contract with TEKSystems, this time working closer to my preferred industry, as a Data Analyst at Microsoft working on a Machine Learning / Conversational AI project, where I am currently today!
If you've read this far, I just wanna say thank you for reading a little into my journey! Regardless of who you may be, I hope to one day meet and thank you, and eventually hear from you your own story. You can reach out to me on any of the resources in the footer below. Peace!