$ whoami

I’m Alex, a programmer with a unique path to software development. Unlike most who have an undergrad in computer science, I graduated with a degree in Psychology and began working in retail banking. It didn’t take long to figure out that this path wasn’t right for me, so I started reflecting on my skills and interests before deciding my next move. I’ve always had an engineering mindset, with a fascination for computers, applications, and the internet, so my gut instinct was to explore that curiosity by going back to school. I left a comfortable position with a well-defined career path to start from scratch, and I haven’t looked back.

Growing up, we had MSN Messenger, MySpace, and Piczo. I remember spending hours designing pages for my own site and helping my friends with theirs, learning the basics of HTML along the way. I then graduated to writing simple scripts on the family PC to clean up disk space, remove Windows bloat, and tune privacy settings. In the years that followed, I discovered the power of Python and how it could be used to automate tasks like backing up files, managing a budget, and scraping web pages for data to use in personal projects. I had plenty of programming experience growing up, but had never thought of it as a career path. It was never really presented as an option when it came time to choose a direction, so I headed down a different road.

Fast forward a few years of experience in the industry and things are looking up. I’ve had the privilege of working alongside a long list of talented researchers, scientists, and engineers to come up with innovative solutions to real-world problems. The journey to get here has been long and bumpy, but with support from my partner, family, and mentors, I feel as though I am exactly where I’m supposed to be. And if the last few years are any indication, the best is still yet to come.

If something I’ve written about resonates or you would like to get in touch feel free to reach out on LinkedIn or GitHub.