Major Accomplishment
As of today April 1, 2010 I have been a software developer for over ten years. This is a very proud day for me. At the same time this is my tenth year anniversary at a company called Healthwise. I started at Healthwise as a programmer Analyst 1 April 1, 2000. I have come a long way in the last ten years. I have grown as a man, and as an individual.
Its interesting to see where I started, and where I am now. A really good friend of mine Travis Dugan invited me to a users group at the time. It was a VB users group the other people in the group where professional developers with experience, and degrees. I just had an interest in programming, and wanted to explore what it was like to write software. At the time I started the group I was a software tester at a company call Design Concepts International. That was where I met Travis and developed the friend ship that we have to this day. With that friend ship and encouragement from him I started to develop my skills at writing applications. I still remember when I would call him with a question he would tell me to look it up, because of his persistence of me learning how to look things up on my own that has turned me into the developer I am today. I developed skills to write test applications for the company I was working for at the time. Things changed at the company I was working for our parent company itron decided to close our offices in Boise. I was encouraged by Travis and other friends to apply for an entry level developer’s job.
The job in question was a posting I saw on the Healthwise website. The job posting was for a manufacturing programmer Analyst 1. I figured what would it hurt if I didn’t get the job I would have at least tried. In February of that year I received a phone call from a Bob Long, and Brian Howard. Bob at the time was VP of technology at Healthwise and Brian was the manager of what would be the manufacturing team. The phone interview went really well to the point of being invited for an in person interview. At the interview I was introduced to people I developed good relationships with over the long years. The room was filled with five people, David Starr, Viki Smith, Brian Howard these are the people I remember the most from the interview. I even remember the question that David asked me. What did I want to be in five years? I told him I wanted to be a seasoned software developer. Well that was ten years ago and I am what I told David I wanted to be. I have been for a while working my way up from that Programmer Analyst 1 all the way up to a Software engineer 3. The progression has been fun I can’t wait to see what happens over the next ten years.
