Work experience

I worked an summer internship at a payroll company called Paycom. We assimilated into teams of six to eight people and each built fairly large projects. Ours was one where we added leaderboards and challenges to their learning module system to hopefully make it a little less dry.

I got a pretty excellent idea of how software development works on an intimate level. I've since gone on to reproduce many of the techniques I learned there in my hobby projects.

Since it was in Dallas and lot of us had to relocate, they actually had us living in a hotel while we were there. I can't say I'd ever expected to live in a hotel for three months but it was a pretty neat experience. Housekeeping would come in and make the bed and change the towels every other day and it was almost like having a maid. Now if only hiring an actual maid weren't so expensive.

I spent a couple of years in college working part-time as a tutor. I taught everything from basic Java and C to data science and even steganography at one point.

Now I'm pretty reliably able to assess learning styles on the fly and explain complicated technical concepts to (admittedly, sometimes very non-technical) people.

I went over time with students pretty often which I guess means I must've enjoyed what I was doing. A student walking up to me half way through the semester and asking me what a Python is felt a little like a blank canvas in a way. I've always enjoyed explaining things to people.

I spent about a year working as a cashier at HEB. It was a pretty demanding job that required a whole lot of standing, but I actually didn't dislike it. It's kind of like I was getting paid to work out or something.

Busy was definitely the keyword. They always had me doing something whenever I was there. On the register, we had to meet pretty stringent speed requirements when we were scanning items. 30 items per minute doesn't sound like much, but when a customer comes through and slaps a whole bunch of loose wet vegetables on the conveyer belt which you now have to individually identify and weigh, things can get tricky.

I was trained for a few different things, including (but not limited to) working the register, bagging groceries, and wrangling shopping carts in the parking lot and preventing any from rolling into the obligatory brightly colored mustang parked nearby. Half the parking lot was on a huge slope so that really was a concern.

I'd say I've gotten a fairly varied experience between all the different jobs I've worked. I've learned to work in an office and coordinate with teammates to write software, gained experience communicating ideas and teaching technical concepts, and worked under high pressure to meet stringent deadlines and speed requirements.