Jared Blatt, a Software Engineer at Google, was our recent Guest Speaker for the West Virginia Coding Club. Jared was born and raised in New Martinsville, WV. He attended Magnolia High School and was into sports and video games, but didn't really have an idea of what coding was. There were no coding classes at his High School.
The first time he tried coding was using a TI-84 calculator and got into games on the calculators. Jared wanted to learn how the games were built. He started by writing programs to help with Physics and Chemistry. Jared created a fighting game where you would pick a number as a character and have different attack choices. Didn’t realize he could do this as a job.
Jared started to think about college and what to study. Jared's Dad was a mechanical engineer and his Mom was a nurse. So, he decided to study towards a bio-medical engineer. Jared attended West Virginia University and started in engineering. In Engineering 101 class he learned about the different types of engineering paths and opportunities. From there he decided to pursue robotics (computer engineering / computer science). He found that through his studies that he was more interested in the software / coding side of this discipline.
During his schooling he had an internship with WVU Center for Neuroscience and got to work with 3-D modeling of brain scans and developed a tablet app that allowed users to filter various aspects of the image and evolve the model.
Later in his schooling he landed an Internship at Leidos and was later hired to work there. On the first day of work, it snowed, and he was the only person at the office (about 10 people at that point). Jared interned and worked at Leidos for almost 5 years, in that time Leidos grew to about 150 people. Jared lead a team for 6 months and had leadership opportunities and supervised a team of about 15 people. His supervisor role included planning, keeping things at a high level, while supporting his team.
Jared wanted to work with people who had a lot of experience and he wanted to write more code, stay more technical and do the fun stuff he liked doing with coding. Jared reached out to a Google recruiter that had reached out to him in the past and from there was able to make a move to working for Google in the Pittsburgh, PA area and he has worked at Google for just over 3 years.
For Google, Jared codes in Java, C++, Golang and Python for their data centers.
That opportunity allowed Jared to stay close to home and enjoy the amenities that Pittsburgh, PA has to offer. He didn’t realize that it was a thing to be able to work remotely and stay close to family. The Global Pandemic has changed a lot of work flows. Jared says he loves to be able to go into the office and work together with people, but due to the Pandemic, remote work has evolved and allowed flexibility and more opportunities for people to work remotely in the Tech Industry.
One challenge for remote workers is when do you start working and stop working when you do your job from home. Discipline is needed to be able to not work too much or to make sure you work enough. Jared's girlfriend works in the tech industry as a Technical Writer. She works remotely full-time.
Jared's advice: Write Code! Coding, like any skill, gets better as you practice it more. You will face many challenges and barriers to learning and problem solving. The Internet has many good resources to utilize. You will learn more when you get stuck and have to figure out how to climb out of it. Choose things to do, like try to code a phone app or automate a life process.
As you start to go to school and get a job - have a Linkedin Account. It is a great place to have recruiters reach out to you. Maintain relationships with recruiters. Be courteous even if not interested at the time, because you never know when you may need to reach out to them for opportunities.
He learned more in a year as an intern. Have to learn the fundamentals in classes/school, but hands-on experience is invaluable. Try to get an internship, because the process is an experience in itself.
Work on OpenSource software. You may get to work with Software Developers and it can show up on your GitHub and is good for your potential future job opportunities. By doing this you’re working to create a portfolio.
When thinking about the interview process for Coders, there can be behavioral Interviews, that are more common. Questions included tell me about a time when, and your strengths and weaknesses. For a Coding Interview - They may give you a problem and have you write code for them. Or they give you some code and give you time to complete the program, filling in the missing parts.’
Dan McElroy, President of the WV Coding Club commented, "We appreciate Jared for his comprehensive presentation to our WV Coding Club students to help them understand the opportunities for them as they continue to learn to code and develop their problem solving skills. Jared is another West Virginian who is a role model for our students to learn from. Thank you Jared!"
Keep Coding!