Me VS. The Machine
Sprint 1 was a bit of a struggle. My main objectives were to setup my development environment and get started with the login authentication for our Animal Adoption Web app. Things would have been MUCH smoother if this app were mobile and especially using Flutter – I could have completed my sprint goals in my sleep! Using Python/Flask for web development and Google Cloud as our backend is completely new to me on both fronts. Luckily, I have experience utilizing Firebase for user authentication and was able to integrate that into our web app and also with Google Cloud. My next hurdle would be to figure out how to store our User data in the cloud after successfully signing up.
The Right Choice
My current job is as a Resource Specialist for a company that I was fortunate enough to join when I was living in Florida the past two years. I currently work remote in New York and luckily brought my job with me. I feel extremely blessed to have a supervisor that is always looking out for me and finding new opportunities to grow and help out where needed. She had reached out to me to help figure out an algorithm to help keep costs low to maximize our profits for each project we perform. As a background – the company I work for does many things in terms of assessing properties that are in need of inspection. The main scopes I have my fingerprints on are for environmental assessments and property condition assessments.
Analysis of My Algorithm
My supervisor was asked by the CEO of our company to help build an algorithm that will help lower costs for projects that are inspected by our pool of 1099 subcontractors. We still need to keep in mind that we want to keep these assessors happy so we had to find a solution to a normal standard of paying subcontractors that keep prices fair as well as maximize profits on our end. My supervisor then asked me if I had any idea on how to get this going. I willing took on the project to expand my boundaries and hope that I could come up with something that can be used by more people within my company than just the team of 8 that I work with on a day-to-day. Skipping many steps forward, I was able to come up with the algorithm that has been active for the past few months and to summarize what I have been hearing and the numbers that have backed it, we have been able to drive costs down, but still keep a healthy relationship with our subcontractors.
Next on my Plate
This brings me to everything I had originally hoped for when joining this company (even though I did not set my hopes very high, more of a best case scenario type of dreaming) – I have begun conversations with the application development side of this company. All thanks to my amazing supervisor who is always looking out for our best interests. She had let me know that she brought my name up to the Director of Business Applications when she had heard that we may be developing new software that basically combines two applications that a lot of people use everyday. I was able to speak to him briefly about some of the apps that his team has developed. This coming Friday I am set to speak to a member of a small team that uses the service Fulcrum to help gather the data we need via smartphones from assessors while inspecting properties. I am really excited to get the ball rolling with these conversations and hopefully transition over to becoming a Software Developer for this company much sooner than I was expecting. In a perfect world, by my next blog post I’ll be in a new position making use of this degree!
