Cemetery

Ah, I see you found the cemetery. Kinda spooky isn't it?

This is where Jake used to bury his projects and work stuff. Feel free to take a look around, but don't wander too far...I've heard strange sounds coming from here at night. And after I heard the rumors of this place, I had to sleep with my nightlight for a month!

Projects

Jake was always working on something in his lab. Whether it was to learn something new, or solving some problem he'd encountered, he always had something in the works. And when he was done with them, he buried them here in the cemetery. I've heard that some of them are still alive and kicking though!

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Several years ago, Jake adopted the Getting Things Done system to help manage all the things going on in his life. And for a long time, he was able to make due with just using a note taking app. But after a while he outgrew his system and needed something a bit more. Together we checked out different tools and tried a few different ones, but none really fit. So, like a true engineer, Jake dove in and decided to build the tool he was looking for...and BuzyBee was born!

From managing all the tasks and projects going on, to tracking and building habits, BuzyBee has become Jake's #1 place to keep a handle on his personal productivity.

He hasn't released BuzyBee to the public just yet, but be on the lookout because he told me he intends to real soon! And if you haven't yet, you have go meet Chester Bee Worthington, the project's mascot. He's just the cutest little bee you'll ever see!

Sveltekit Node Postgres Prisma Redis CSS Docker Playwright Vitest Vite

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Igor was one of Jake's earlier experiments, but also one of his most successful. It was an internal Command Line Interface (CLI) build tool used to automate the creation and management of different types of A/B and Multi-variant tests across different tech stacks and enterprise clients.

Jake built Igor because he noticed some inefficiencies in the existing development workflow when he worked at Brooks Bell. So he decided to build a solution on his own time that could automate those problems away. Node was new to him at the time, so he took it as an opportunity to learn a new technology and solve some problems at the same time. The tool was a hit and was quickly adopted by the team. He continued to maintain and improve Igor for more than 3 years until he eventually left the company, at which time they forked the project and Jake laid Igor to rest.

Why was it called Igor, you ask?

Tests were often called "experiments" at Brooks Bell, because they were experimenting with different ideas and solutions on their client's webpages. And just like Igor assisted Dr. Frankenstein in his experiments, this build tool assisted the developers in building theirs. So they named it after the assistant to the mad scientist!

View on Github

Node Javascript

Work Stuff

Jake had lots of experience building stuff for the web! He told me lot's of stories about the different projects he worked on and the people he got to work with. My favorite was the one about the time he built an automation tool named Igor. Isn't that a silly name for a developer tool?!

present...

Raleigh, NC (Remote)

Jake is currently in the middle of leading a major overhaul of the Greenplaces application. The project is a huge undertaking, handling redesigning the UI, building out a new component library, refactoring and consolidating large portions of the backend, and implementing thorough testing to keep it all dependable and easy to maintain. During this whole process he's administered standards across the team, manages the release process, and has even reduced cycle time by more than 40%!

PHP Laravel Livewire Dusk PHPUnit

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Austin, TX (Remote)

When he was at Kickfin, Jake headed up the frontend development of their latest (at the time) product, taking it from it's inception through to launch and beyond. He also lead development of lots of different features both for their internal tools used to manage the business, and for their external clients. So he got to experience solving problems for different kinds of users, which I know he really enjoyed!

Node Typescript React Redux CSS Cypress Jest

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Raleigh, NC (Remote)

Jake joined Karma Wallet very early on, so he was one of only three developers. But that didn't hinder him from building out a custom integration with external financial software, implementing a new automated continuous integration and continuous deployment (or CI/CD for short) pipeline, and also building an entirely new admin portal for internal employees to monitor business reporting and manage the company's users. While doing all this, he was still able to lead the team in migrating to Mobx and Typescript, which were new technologies for them, in an effort to solve some of their pain points.

Node MongoDB Typescript React Mobx CSS

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Raleigh, NC (Hybrid)

Jake landed at Levitate just days after being laid off at the very beginning of the Covid pandemic. There he went from having no React experience to becoming the lead frontend developer of a new gamified sales tool the company was building. He's also big on knowledge sharing, so he led the initiative of building an internal knowledge-base for other teams to use to solve their customer's problems. Not only that, but he regularly joined client calls to help provide technical support, and he volunteered to maintain the companies marketing website!

Typescript React Mobx CSS C#

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Raleigh, NC

Brooks Bell was Jake's very first professional development job after graduating college where he built A/B tests for really big companies. Within his first 6 months, and on his own time, Jake built a custom command line tool they eventually named Igor that was quickly adopted by the team to automate large portions of the their work, and also to align the entire team around a single set of standards for all their clients. Jake maintained that tool for the next 3(ish) years and it allowed them to increase the number of A/B tests they were able to output by more than 400%!

Node Javascript HTML CSS Adobe Target Optimizely Dynamic Yield