Mike Dodge: About me

I'm a tech nerd, I love all things tech. I was the kid growing up that would take apart the toaster and remote control. And what do you know, I was able to put some of those things back together. My first PC, was a hunk of junk, but it was just enough to play quake and starcraft. Gaming was my entry point. I first started with hardware, realizing I needed more RAM and a better graphics card to play some of the games I wanted to. From there, I was writing buy scripts to help me win at Counter-Strike.

With some inspiration from an Aunt, I picked up my first web development book when I was in 7th grade (HTML Goodies). I was hooked. I was convinced I was either going to be a web or game developer. At this point I started making web pages for anyone who wanted one. My uncle was my first paying customer. I made a digital business card for his painting company. From there I got a few more paying jobs. These sites were not the greatest but at the time when most people might not have a web presence, anything was better than nothing. I was a proud of my skills, when most kids were cutting lawns I was making web pages.

This is where my story takes a weird turn. As I was going through high school (2000-2004) my aunt, who encouraged me to do web development, was working for a '.com', when everything crashed. She never said it explicitly, but listening to my aunt, who was frustrated about having a college degree and working an entry-level job, because she couldn't get a programming gig. I heard college wasn't worth it. My parents worked hard, all my needs were met, but anything I wanted, for the most part, I was on my own. When it came to college, my dad made it pretty clear, that they couldn't afford to send me. But that I could live in their house rent free while I was in college.

With that in the back of my mind I started my freshman year of high school, and was excited to join the computer science track. Yeah, my school was testing out 'tracks'. My homeroom and many of my other classes would be shared with people from my same track, and most of the teachers would try to incorporate computer science into the curriculum. I signed up for an intro to computer science class, because the syllabus said it would cover HTML.

On the first day of my intro computer science class, I realized I was in the wrong class. The teacher asked us to open up word, and was going to show us how to use the program. I raised my hand immediately and said, I thought we were going to be learning how to make websites. The teacher said that wouldn't be happening until the end of the year, and to talk to her after class. I showed her all the sites I had made, and she recommended that I joined the next level of computer science class, but I wasn't in a qualifying math class yet. As a compromise, The teacher allowed me to be a TA. I would go around and help kids with their class work, and on Fridays I would help teach the class. I had so much fun, and was learning a lot.

This is right around the time when our school IT tech quit, he got a good paying job somewhere other than education. But that meant there was no one to fix the computer labs at the school. When my teacher learned that I was able to fix computers, she offered me a deal where I would get class credit to fix the computer labs and in my down time I would work on anything that interested me as long as I passed all my tests.

This deal was great. I learned a lot! I also met a few friends that are still some of my closest friends I have today! By our senior year, The group of us, became the IT crew for our school. We even got laminated badges signed by the principal. When we were close to graduating our teacher had talked to the principal about us working at our High-school while we went to college. But it turns out the school district had a rule that prohibited anyone from being faculty, while any peers still attended the school. I didn't want to wait for 3 years. So I moved on.

I wasn't sure what to do next, but I thought it would be a good idea to get a full time job for a while to save some money. I started working at the same tile company as my Dad. Before you know it, two years passed. It was a union job and paid well. Then one day...

I got a call from a friend from the high-school IT crew, he was now working at Fry's electronic corporate office, doing remote IT support for the stores employees and servers. When he called me he said something like "You remember the IT stuff we did in school?" Me:"Ya?" Him:"Ya! They pay me for that stuff!!!" Me:"Im in!"

When I started working at frys, is when my learning really took off. There was so much low hanging fruit. I was able to automate most of my day to day tasks with in the first few months. From then on I kept taking on more and more projects and finally I realized that it was time for me to move on.

Another friend told me about a position doing desktop support at Stanford. It was a slight step back but a big bump in pay. I took the job and learned a lot about networking and macs. During the housing crash in 2009 Stanford and and many other companies had layoffs.

One Thursday coming into work, my manager asked me to meet, I could tell this was hard for my manager. This is a week after he got finished telling everyone that we were done with layoffs, well it turns out for the most part that was true. But in my case, my position was funded by a different department, and instead of doing layoffs, the department I supported decided they would try to go without IT support for a while. So in the round of musical chairs, I was left standing. That's sad they gave me a pretty good deal. They gave me two weeks notice, and gave me three months severance. I told my manager I was going to take the rest of the day/tomorrow off.

That night I wrote my resume, and sent it as many people as I could. I woke up the next morning with a few replies. One of them was for a company I never heard of. They asked if they could interview me that day. I replied and met them at noon. The interview was kind of a joke. The person asking me questions was reading off of a piece of paper, I answer the first few questions so confidently / quickly, my interviewer jumped to the bottom of the page, asked two more questions.

Then he said "all right, we'll be moving you on to the second round."

I said "Awesome, so what are the next steps."

"We're going to set up the second interview and we'll give you a call back, our client needs to fill this position very quickly."

I said thank you and left. While I was driving home, I received a call

"Is there anyway you'd be able to meet our clients for an interview in Palo alto today?"

"I'm nearly home, it'll take me a few hours to get there, would 5:00 p.m. be okay?"

"That should be fine" He gave me the address and he explained that his company was a contracting company and he is filling a position for Facebook.

"Did you say facebook?"

"ya"

"Oh awesome! Tell them i'm on my way!"

At this point i'm ecstatic! I start racing up 101. As I pull into the facebook parking lot, I felt out of place. I was here for an interview, so I was dressed in nice clothes. But everyone walking in and out of the building were wearing tee-shirts, and drinking out of red solo cups. Was there a party going on? I checked into reception and after a few mins the hiring manager comes to grab me. Walking into the building was interesting, it was after 5pm on a friday and the place was packed, there was music playing, people riding around on rip sticks and standing around chatting and drinking. The manager lead me to a conference room and said "I'll be right back".

When he returns, I noticed he and the 4 others behind him, were all carrying, what seemed to be mandatory, red solo cups. They each took turns asking me questions. Most of the questions were simple, and I answered quickly with confidence. The last person to ask me a question tried to throw me a curve ball. I told him as much. He asked me to explain, and once I had he nodded and I got the sense my non answer was satisfactory.

As the interview came to an end, the manager was walking me out, asked me. "Would you be able to start on Monday?". I was so excited I did not play it cool at all. I was gushing as I said. "OH WOW, YA TOTALLY!... wait...". I then explained my situation and how I would love to start on monday. but I would need to talk to my current manager, and see if they needed.

Luckily I was able to get a hold of my manager and he explained that if I wasn't able to finish my remaining two weeks, that I wouldn't receive my 3 month severance. But he worked it out with HR and for the first 2 weeks of working with facebook, I working nights at Stanford.


{ DRAFT WITH MORE TO COME... }