After graduating from Flatiron, I interviewed at several places and the competition was fierce. As part of my interviewing process, I had to make forms using ERB, build a Tic Tac Toe game, create a survey generator in AngularJS, and map out a computer using class diagrams. I also built a personal project called Walk2Dinner. It helped me personally to find restaurants close to me and provide me with easy walking directions. It also pulls in pertinent weather data like temperature, sunset, and the chance of rain.
Interim Jobs
While I job searched for something in web development, I took a job as a project engineer at an engineering firm in Hell’s Kitchen. I did a lot of life safety surveying and helped the company with some business analytics. I helped streamline their digitization process for all the accumulated old documents they had laying around and helped them to launch their own web application called NYCityAlerts, based on the Python framework, Django. I also worked for the Flatiron School as a Learn Expert helping incoming students with online support and troubleshooting their development environments. It was a pretty intense few months. I would work from 8-4:30 pm in Hell’s Kitchen then come home and work from 5-9pm from my laptop. It was a great way to stay a part of the development community and keep my skills sharp.
Getting a Job
While I was working as a project engineer and a Learn Expert, I was also on the job hunt. A few months after graduating, I accepted a position at a small branding agency for nonprofits located in Greenpoint. The company is four people strong (5 now) and it’s a short walk to work in the morning, which I love. The short commute reminds me of my time in Korea. I’m the sole web developer at the company so there’s no one above me to bounce ideas off of or ask for help. Initially, it was pretty nerve-racking, but I’ve learned a lot and become quite adept at WordPress and PHP, the tools I work with most often.
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