Being Grown Up and Stuff...
Alex Rodriguez
Presented By
Who am I?
Alex Rodriguez
I am passionate about...
- Science & Technology
- Rock Climbing
- Anything Outdoors
And this guy...
I work for...
The College Experience...
- Had no idea what I wanted to do
- Didn't value learning
- Started a Fraternity
- Partied a lot
- Learned a lot
- Found an internship junior year
- Worst professional experience I'd ever have
- One of the most valuable professional experience I'd ever have
Lessons Learned
- Get involved in SOMETHING
- Don't chase paper... Find and chase your passion
- Diploma
- $$$
- Get to know your teachers
- Make as much time as possible to gain professional experience in or out of your field of study
- Volunteer
- Internships
- Freelance
- College isn't for everyone and thats okay
- Learn how to learn!
Life After College...
- STILL didn't know what I wanted to do
- Moved back home
- Got a job at Subway
- Started freelancing in my spare time
Freelancing
- It's very challenging...
- Requires more then technical skills
- Social
- Finance
- Business
- Spent more time on the business side then the creative and technical
- It's not necessarily WHAT you know, but WHO you know
- Networking: Quality > Quantity
- You can only learn so much working on your own...
Starting a Career
- After a year and a half of freelancing and working at Subway, I decided it was time to start a REAL career
- Spent a few months interviewing at various companies
- Just as I was starting to give up on finding the perfect job, I found...
- Founded in 2001
- I've been with the company for the last 3 years
- Frontend
- Backend
- iOS
- Android
- Project Management
- Hiring and On boarding
- IT Support
- Process Improvement
- ...
- I continue to love every minute of it
Our singular goal...
is to be the world’s leading web agency building consistently amazing websites, systems and products.
How do we measure this?
- Client retention
- Client referrals
- Pulled not pushed
- Having the greatest team
- Progressive opportunities for team
- Employees grow to greater things
- New grads want to work here
- Consistently profitable
We want to build cool stuff...
With cool people...
For cool clients...
We do work with...
- Startups
- Small Business
- Large Business
We offer an array of services...
- UX Strategy and Consulting
- Website Design and Development
- Web App Design and Development
- Mobile App Design and Development
- And more...
Expectations
- Manage yourself
- Own the details
- Make no assumptions
- Be the most prepared person in the room
- Know/manage the time budget
- We can do anything, but are we being paid to?
- Do whatever it takes
- But be pragmatic
- Make yourself proud of the outcome
- Hold yourself/others to a high standard
- Always do the right thing
Simple Best Practices
- Expectation setting is everything
- With each other, with our clients and with yourself
- Under promise and over deliver
- Review early and often
- State and restate everything
- Make NO assumptions
- Talk in person whenever possible rather then e-mail/chat
- Come to conflict quickly
- Make NO assumptions
What we look for
- The Three Hs
- Happy
- Humble
- Hungry
- Ability to work in a team structure
- Ability to make decisions and solve problems
- Ability to communicate verbally with people inside and outside an organization
- Ability to plan, organize and prioritize work
- Ability to obtain and process information
- Ability to analyze quantitative data
- Technical knowledge related to the job