Leaving Very, when Very ended
Almost five years, a new project nearly every year, a lot of IoT, one great trip, and then the company let everyone go.
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work
14 entries
Punta Cana, A Work Retreat in the Caribbean (and My Ongoing War With Southwest)
My first time leaving the country for somewhere tropical, an all-inclusive work retreat on the white sand of Bávaro, where I finally met the coworkers I'd spent years working alongside, and confirmed my lasting opinion that Southwest is terrible.
Read entry →Leaving Mercy, and the commute that broke me
A year building patient apps for virtual care, getting to hire friends, and finally admitting the drive was wearing me down.
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For Toni
A small tribute to a coworker from my years at the grocery company's corporate office. We were never friends outside of work, but she is someone I still think about, and she deserves a place in the history I keep here.
Read entry →Leaving Monsanto, which became Bayer
Three years building software for plant science, and the friends who made it worth showing up for.
Read entry →Eight years of night classes, and finally a degree
The bachelor's in computer science that took me the better part of a decade, one after-work class at a time.
Read entry →Leaving the cable company
Two years where I went from web to iOS, met friends I still talk to, and learned what a good salary even feels like.
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San Francisco, WWDC, the Summer Swift Was Born, and My First Solo Adventure
My first real solo trip as an adult: a WWDC lottery ticket from my job sent me to San Francisco the week Swift was unveiled. With the trains on strike I walked the entire city on foot, watched Bastille play, started a lifelong ice-cream tradition, and made my first, unsuccessful, run at the Pacific.
Read entry →Leaving Schnucks, after seven and a half years
My first real job out of high school, the grocery company that took a chance on a kid who had won a website contest. What I will miss most is the people.
Read entry →An associate's degree, for free, while I worked
Two years at the community college, paid for and worked around my first job, with exactly one plan: transfer it all into a real CS degree.
Read entry →Once upon a time a young boy named Todd
In 2007 I retold the start of my career as a fairy tale on my forum: the bakery counter, the web competition, the awards ceremony I was sure I'd lost. The companion piece to the newspaper version.
Read entry →Bakery clerk takes a trip around the World Wide Web
How a high-school web-design competition got me, an 18-year-old bakery clerk, an internship in the corporate IT department. With the company newspaper clipping to prove it.
Read entry →The bakery, where they called me Muscles
After bagging groceries I got moved to the bakery counter: a chainsmoking boss who only ever called me Muscles, a walk-in oven I had to scrape by hand, the 3 a.m. morning it filled with black smoke, and the night a sink turned into a geyser and soaked me in front of a customer.
Read entry →My first job, and the worst thing I ever said over the intercom
How I got hired as a grocery bagger at sixteen (my dad's good name did most of the work), why I started at a store across town, and the day I tried to page the frozen-foods department and broadcast a swear word to the entire building instead.
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