#front end engineering

posted by Michael McGovern, Talent Community Manager

Meet Chris, Front-End Engineer for Yahoo Search in our Sunnyvale office. Since joining Yahoo in 2007, Chris has won the most number of Hackathons in the company’s history. He loves being able to take an idea, pull together a team, and build a working prototype in 24 hours. He is passionate about mentoring new hackers at Hackathons. As well as his day job as a front-end engineer, Chris also sits on the Yahoo for Good Council where he focuses on leveraging Yahoo’s products and people to bring positive social impact. He is a proud Canadian who graduated with a Master’s of Computer Science degree from the University of Victoria in Canada. In his spare time, he enjoys playing street hockey.

How did you get interested in tech?

My parents always had a computer in the house, and I was always fascinated by it. I had the freedom to tinker with the computer. I started off with playing video games, then started created ASCII art. By the time I got to elementary school, I was excited that we finally got computer classes but was disappointed it meant learning how to type. The teacher didn’t know what to do with me, so she gave me a programming textbook, and I started learning programming on my own. By the time I was a teenager, I was building websites for local businesses and non-profits, and realized this could be a career.

What is it like working for Yahoo?

I enjoy the entrepreneurial spirit here at Yahoo. The product and engineering leaders that I work with on a day-to-day basis all come from startups that Yahoo has acquired. It brings an amazing culture and energy to the team. It's a privilege working with such passionate and talented people every day. They also empower me to be entrepreneurial by trying new product ideas at during our Hackathons; some of the ideas get pitched and funded and I get to work on it as part of my day job. The analogy I make is, it’s like doing a startup inside a bigger company.

What is your connection to Yahoo for Good?

As part of Yahoo For Good, I get a lot of opportunities to volunteer for different STEM initiatives with the goal of inspiring young people to think about a career in technology. I love mentoring kids, students, and first time programmers; it's great to see people get excited when they actually build something cool and gain self-confidence that they can in fact code. I've helped out at a number of external coding events such as Hour of Code, Women Who Code, Code For The Kingdom, Hack Western, etc. It’s a very meaningful way to give back to the community with the talents we are blessed with.

Why is diversity important to you?

During Hackathons at Yahoo, I lead a team called "Team Dragon", and a core reason why we're able to continue to innovate new ideas is because of diversity. The team consists of people from different job functions, cultures, new hires and veterans. It's that diversity that makes ideas better by having so many different perspectives and backgrounds think about a problem and come up with a novel solution. One of my favorite tech talks hosted by Yahoo Labs was about how innovation works, and they highlighted that atypical combinations of ideas leads to innovation. Diversity amplifies that.

What is your advice to aspiring women who are considering a career in STEM?

STEM isn't just about science and math, it’s about being curious, it's a way of thinking, it's a way of tinkering, it's a way of figuring out how stuff works, and it’s about problem solving. It's a literal way of building the future and I think that is very meaningful and purposeful. One of my favorite quotes is from Dr. Robert Zubrin (founder of the Mars Society) who says, “If you have it in your power to do something great, and important, and wonderful, then you should.”

Lastly, what is your favorite Yahoo memory?

My favorite memory was a couple weeks ago, when we competed at Yahoo's 10 Year Anniversary Hackathon. We got a large team together, half of them were first timers competing at a Hackathon. We got to pitch our demos to Marissa Mayer and David Filo, and we ended up winning best overall Hack (out of 200 teams). It was a very special milestone (10 year anniversary) given the legacy of Hackathons at Yahoo.

Announcing Part Time Courses: Intro to Front End Engineering with Thinkful and The Iron Yard

Our value proposition at The Iron Yard has always been simple: we provide immersive, in-person programming education that helps you launch a software development or design career.

One of the key ingredients to our graduates’ success is a strict focus on immersive education—our students give 100% of their attention to learning a single programming discipline for 12 weeks straight. Going from…

Bob Holben, a student in our Atlanta Front End Engineering program, recently wrote a great reflection after being in the program for two weeks. 

While week one felt a little bit about going away to summer camp, week two is where a little bit of fatigue settled in. It’s going to be a long burn, and I can’t wait to get to the end and reflect on how far this process has taken me and my classmates.

Each day except for Friday consists of lectures in the morning and lab (exercises) in the afternoon/evening. On Fridays, we have lab all day.

…

The Iron Yard does a real good job. It’s not just about head-down coding. They make a point to foster a sense of community and create activities that don’t involve a keyboard. This week, we had sessions about personal brand building, design inspiration, and of course there was Friday Iron Pints.

…

It’s moving pretty darn fast (and I’m glad for that). Before this week, I was under the impression that map/reduce/filter are programming concepts that are intermediate level. Not here. We learned about the forEach loop and an hour later, we embarked on our Thursday night homework that included exercises with map, reduce, and filter.

The train has left the station…

This post was written by Aaron Larner, Austin’s Front End Engineering Instructor, on his personal blog. Follow him on Twitter 

When I moved to Austin Texas I had a whole laundry list of goals that I wanted to accomplish. I had been living in Madison, Wisconsin for five years, the longest period of time I had stayed in one place during my adult life. Needless to say, moving to Austin was a big deal for me I wanted to get the most out of my time here.

One of the biggest goals on my list was to climb a V5 (a grade of bouldering problem), so when I got to Austin in September, 2013 I started climbing really hard in a effort to check that goal off of my list. A few weeks later I injured my finger and was out for a month. "That's okay" I thought to myself. I'll rest up and get back to it when I'm all healed. At the beginning of November I was ready to go again. I was in climbing withdrawal and so excited to get back on the wall. By December I had injured myself a second time. This time it was my elbow.