Personal details
Zack F.
Summary
I'm Zack. I write a lot of code. I went to Carnegie Mellon to write code. Worked on the Xbox team at Microsoft writing code. I made automated flying robots in Silicon Valley by (you guessed it)...writing code (and with only 1 explosion!). I made the game FarmVille 2, decided PHP should die in a fire and switched to the healthcare industry building an 100% automated robotic lab for genetic screening, which was really cool and REALLY boring (healthcare is tedious), so I got out quick to do something way more fun and WAY harder.
My sister, my best friend and I all decided to start a company. This blew all my previous experience out of the water. I took all my game-dev knowledge and applied it to the fashion industry, loading up purses, bags, jackets, hoodies, hats, and rings in 3D inside of a browser and letting the customer customize it all in real-time like a character creator in a video game. I acted as CTO, hiring a team of engineers, contractors and artists to build it with me. It is from this position which I gained the true experience that I will confer to my mentees here. For 3 years I spent hours each day reviewing and ripping apart my team's code, researching and reviewing their techniques, teaching them the art of engineering, and working to hone our craft such that we could build a piece of software that literally no one had been able to build until we came along...all under terribly strict deadlines from our customers.
These days I work as a staff engineer at Aurora making self-driving 18-wheelers.
Needless to say, I know how to teach people to write great code, and I freakin' love it.