Hi. I’m Andy. Welcome to my personal portfolio. Here you can read my blog, view some of my past projects, or get a hold of me through email or social media. Hopefully you like what you see.
But first, a little background. I come from a pretty technical background. I have a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Management Information Systems from the University of Nebraska, Omaha. When I was completing school, I decided that even though I really liked the power of development, it’s not what I would want to do every day of my life. I pictured the stereotypical dark basement with limited bathroom breaks, and lots of RedBull.
I got a job at a large insurance agency in town as a firewall administrator. I learned a lot about networking and how much goes on behind the scenes that you never think about. One day, my boss asked me to switch responsibilities due to another employee leaving. So I started to learn about enterprise directories and LDAP. Over the next 3 years I completely rebuilt the LDAP infrastructure for the organization. Simplification was our main goal, we also wanted to make sure we were geographically distributed. After a while I began to get tired of the tasks I was asked to do. I thought about moving on to an organization that fit my personality better.
One day I was reading one of my favorite news websites, and I came across an article about a new website development course starting up here in Omaha. I pulled up their website, and started to read through what they would be covering.
To tangent slightly, I should tell you that I always thought websites were fun to create. I had taught myself a little HTML and CSS, but never had the time to learn any of the more advanced concepts. So when I saw the course material I was excited. It was a beginner course that would walk students through all the fundamentals. Enough to understand what was going on and useful enough to get hired. It sounded perfect.
I applied, and after a quick coding exercise I was accepted. I quit my job and started planning for the first day of class.
Omaha Code School is complete. We have gone through 12 intense weeks of study, and have learned a lot. I landed a job as a Software Engineer at Flywheel, a WordPress hosting company.
Since this was originally posted a lot has changed. Over the next 8 years I helped Flywheel grow and be acquired, helped integrate into a new company, made the leap and became an Engineering manager, and recently joined the New York Times to start the next chapter of my career.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.