Work Experience

I’m Kjell, 21 years old, and near to the end of my college career at UMM. I’m of average height and in good shape both physically and mentally. I enjoy computers, soccer, hiking, and languages, among other things. This is as close to a resume as I ever hope to have to write. I’ll keep it quick. Below is a list of some of my favorite skills and jobs.

kjell@leanside.com, 612 710 3060

I’m close to graduating from the University of Minnesota Morris. I’ll graduate in december 2008 with companion computer science and french degrees. Jobs programming french computers are already ringing my doorbell. I’m a good independent learner (I started contract programming with rails the summer after I graduated from high school, teaching myself as I went). After high school I wasn’t at all sure whether I wanted to go to college, but I’ve really enjoyed the broad range of stuff I’ve had a chance to look into at a liberal arts school.

A former coworker got the idea that he wanted to start a development shop focused on helping large companies create software products. I spent the summer of 2008 helping with that. With his business know-how and our combined programming gusto Launch Code is getting off the ground, with contracts coming along from Best Buy, McKinsey, and TRANE. Our services are better than what you’ll get outsourcing work to India, and our methodology (not to mention price) is better than what you’ll get with a consulting behemoth like Accenture.

I’ve worked as a tutor in the Computer Science lab at school, helping students to internalize everything from building simple web sites with php/mysql to finally getting recursion in scheme.

I began working with Slantwise the summer after graduating from High School. I got the job because I knew, loved, and could knock together a web application in Rails. I wasn’t particularly good at it; this was ~2005 and both ruby and rails were newfangled.

I freelanced with them on a few projects until they liked me enough to bring me in part time while I was away at college. I’ve since worked as a full employee for two summers, 2006/07, and done smaller bits of maintenance work while away at school. More importantly I’ve learned and practiced the important parts of the craft.

An intense semester long course in the art of designing software programs. Using Java through Eclipse on Linux we worked on smaller projects for a few weeks and then moved on up into large groups. We brought in another CSCI professor to be our customer, she was in charge of scheduling the department’s courses each semester and wanted a calendar–like application to help her. We went through multiple week long iterations working to her specifications, first in four teams of three, then two teams of six, and finally one team of 11.

I designed and developed a survey/questionnaire administering application for the psychology department at UMM. They were tired of having to do research studies on paper with bubble sheets, and wanted to move data collection onto the web. I developed the application—cooperating with two psychology professors and a class of upper level students—with Rails. Most of them chose to use it to collect information for their final assignment.

I’ve played soccer ever since I was 4. I love the flow of soccer matches – it lets you just forget about everything and immerse yourself into an alternate world. Playing it doesn’t pay, but reffing has earned me a buck or two. My sophomore year of college (2006/2007) saw the beginning of a new men’s varsity soccer program, which I of course joined. I’ve started all the games since, playing every position but goalie. In our second year (2007/2008) we won the conference championship, which would have likely qualified us for the national tournament, but as a new program we aren’t eligible until the 08/09 season. Hopefully then.

The Center for Small Towns is a University/Community organization with the mission to study and improve rural life. I worked for a semester on developing sites and retrofitting/customizing a php CMS designed by a previous employee. See the arts meander website (I quit in late 2005, it’s since changed enough that I wish I’d kept a screengrab of it.)

I got my first job when I was maybe 12, I used my bike and a burley to deliver a neighborhood paper to all houses in a thirty block area. I’m still proud of myself, and the money I earned lasted me a long time. (About until the iPod came along and I decided that I needed one, or from 5th to 10th grade.) A fairly trivial job, it was nonetheless fun, and delivering thousands of newspapers all on my own was a big accomplishment back then.