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Candidate Spotlight: Chris Loeper, Software Developer
EdgeLink Candidate, Chris Loeper, chats with us about video games, search engines and his new gig at the Portland-based software company, Thetus Corporation, in our latest "Candidate Spotlight." "My name's Chris Loper. I'm a Software Developer and I'm current employed at Thetus Corporation and I was placed there by EdgeLink. [I've] been working there for a couple weeks now and it's going great! What has been the greatest influence on software engineering in the last five years? I would say the greatest influence has been mobile devices; in particular, the iPhone. It really blew up the market and made it such that every developer had to start considering it for all of their projects. And when you look at it in terms of how people want to interact with the internet -- they don't really want to have to go to their computer to do it; they want to be able to use their phone -- or now, their iPad, or [laughs] ...something like that. How did you become involved in your particular discipline? I became involved in software engineering like most people in my generation, I think, through video games. [Laughs] We kinda grew up with them and, I think, for a lot of us, there was this appeal of, "Oh, wow! I can create these really cool worlds and environments and this interaction." And for me, there was a huge charge in being able to connect with other people in these environments. And that translated now into being able to create an application that is useful for a large audience of people. What tool or technology could you not live without and why? I couldn't live without search engines. Ah, Google, of course, really lead the way on that but when you look at how much information is on the internet: forty-five plus billion web pages -- That's a lot of data! It's probably the largest repository of data in the history of mankind. And data really is only as valuable as it is accessible. Search engines really expose that data and make it usable. What was your first job and what lesson did you learn that you carry with you today? My first job was at a computer repair shop dealing with lots of old Compaqs and, uh, e-machines and whatnot. But what really stuck with me from that is the connection that people had with the technology -- with their computers. And it was really interesting to see how they were an extension of themselves and that's what technology really is. When you bring that into the software development world, you start asking these types of questions like, "Is this useful? How are my clients or users going to connect with this piece of software? Is it functional? Is it natural?" and that's what you need to ask for really good design. Having found a job through EdgeLink, what do you feel is a unique aspect about them that most people might not realize? I don't think a lot of people realize how much work you guys do behind the scenes. It's really unprecedented in the industry that I've experienced so far. There is not just this sense of, "oh, well, I'm matching keywords with skill sets, y'know." There's actually a real process behind it and it shows! What do you think makes for a successful placement? I think a successful placement comes from the meeting of the goals of the candidate with the goals of the company. When you look at it from that perspective, the company and the candidate are almost the same; You have to have a purpose, you have to have a goal, you have to think about the future, you have to have a path to that -- a way to get there. With the company, that's what they think of all the time, so a good match comes from those two ideas meeting together." |
