Mike’s Dev Story

One of my biggest passions in life is social entrepreneurism – finding ways to help make a difference in the community – so back in 2013 I started Southern Utah Cares, a gathering place for events, volunteer opportunities, and a nonprofit directory. Of course, I didn’t have the money to have a website built, so I researched, played around, and learned how to build it myself. After learning the ins and outs of building a website I had others asking me to build them sites, so I teamed up with my wife for her {amazing} design and content skills and Clean Site Designs was born.

Fairly quickly I realized that I also wanted an app for Southern Utah Cares, so I again started researching and playing around and created my first Ionic 1 / AngularJS app in 2015. Realizing that I had a knack for code and that I just needed some guidance to become proficient, I did a 3 month bootcamp in 2016 and was able to come out with version 2 of my app. I was feeling pretty happy.

Within a year I decided I wanted to expand to doing app development full time. I had built other apps to continue learning and knew I had what it takes. Unsure of my level, though, I talked with some guys that were working on a startup and asked to job shadow in order to see where my skills were at comparatively. Within a week the CTO told the CEO to find funds to hire me, and after another week I had the job. After I had been working there for 6 months, funding got tighter and the team went from 3 developers down to 1 – me. So after 6 short months of working with a mentor, I was running solo. I have now carried the company as the sole developer for almost 2 years, where I have been able to maintain the app, fix algorithms, and architect and create all the new features that have been requested.

Check out some of the problems I’ve encountered and the solutions I’ve architected during my time at Networkr here.