Adam Bedient’s Post

Hello! For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Adam. For those of you who DO know me, my name is Adam. Glad we got that out of the way. After spending years as a documentary filmmaker and creative, it’s different and thrilling and scary and fun to call myself a software developer. And here I am! Finally revisiting my old stomping grounds as a math/comp sci nerd. And after learning somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.1 thousand new things over the last few months, my ship is ready to set sail. If you are thinking about hiring an excellent junior software developer to join your team, here’s a few things you might want to know about me: • Math, filmmaking, and coding are all rooted in logic, and logic feels like home to me. • I can solve ANY problem. Sometimes that means googling words from the thing I just googled to figure out what I should be googling next and then googling that. Sometimes that means asking someone with “that particular skillset” for mentorship and support. Sometimes that means closing my eyes for fifteen minutes and lying in bed as I let all the bits and pieces settle into their appropriate places. Most often, it’s some combination of all three. • I care deeply about delivering very high quality goods. The hard part comes when something isn’t perfect, when it’s not my best, when I went down the wrong path. But this is the life and struggle of a creative mind, and I believe in creativity. • I feast on feedback. It doesn’t always feel good, but I firmly believe in an “every note considered” approach. • I think that details matter. A lot. • I’m very good at sniffing out bugs. • I’m very good at conducting meaningful interviews with people I’ve just met. • Error messages used to scare me. Now I find them interesting. • I love a well-composed image. • I’ve come to understand that when you are working on a project with a couple of your peers, and one of them is having a bad day, you are ALL having a bad day. Ignore this and the work will suffer. Open up some space for understanding and healing, and the work will thank you! • I started gardening a couple years back and, in the spring, find myself staring out the window at the plants to see if they’ve grown in the last hour or two. • Coding is like gardening in that if you pay attention to the soil and get good seeds and take care while planting, watching the flowers grow is the easy part. Coding is not like gardening in that when none of your code works and nothing goes to plan, you cannot just throw up your hands and say, “Life is beautiful and complicated! There’s always next year.” • My Junior Varsity soccer coach was wrong. Anger does not motivate me. Kindness does. Please email me if you would like to discuss anything on this list further! Even if you aren’t hiring a jr. developer but something resonates here, I’m always open to chatting about life and philosophy.