Hey, I'm Mike
I'm a developer with more than three years of professional experience.
I have three years of professional experience developing applications with .NET. I started to learn .NET when I was still in college, where I took a few courses on C# and SQL Server. After college, I began using .NET professionally at Maid1.com, where I designed and developed a scheduling application using WinForms. I took what I learned about WinForms from Maid1.com and about SQL Server from college and built an invoice application with a database at AGAE Contractors.
I also have a year of experience designing websites. Currently, I am working as the Website Designer at AGAE Contractors. I am using Webflow to assemble the front-end of the website and to manage the content. Some photos that appear on the website required editing, to make happen I used the Affinity Suite. I am using Google's Marketing Platform to help boost the website's SEO.
Personal Details
Life
I was born and raised in the great city of Chicago where I lived for 24 years. Then I got married and now I live in Schaumburg with my wife and one year old son.
When I'm not working, I love to spend time with my family. I like to go hiking with my wife and son at nearby forest preserves and when we're tired of that, or the weather isn't so good we usually watch shows on TV or play video games. I'm a late sleeper, so when everybody falls asleep, I like to listen to audiobooks. These are the last few books I read:
Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull, Amy Wallace
The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson
Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, Brandon Sanderson
Education
From 2014-2016, I attended Wilbur Wright Community College where I completed most of my general education. I then transferred to the University of Illinois at Chicago to take classes related to my major. These are some of the classes that I took during my degree:
Software Design
Database Systems
Artificial Intelligence
I attended UIC from 2016-2018 and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and a final GPA of 3.5.
AGAE
Application Development
I started working at AGAE in August of 2019. I was originally employed to assist with various software technologies that the company used. For example, they wanted someone to manage their Microsoft Access Databases.
One of the databases I managed dealt with signage jobs. Once I started to understand how the tables in the database related to one another I was able to come up with a design that improved upon this database.
The biggest challenge of the design process was the fact that the original implementation of the database was not normalized. Once I normalized the database I added more functionality to it as well. The original database only tracked jobs, so I thought it would be a good idea to add the ability to track the timesheets linked to each job.
Once I had a design that I was happy with I implemented it in SQL Server using Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio to manage the database. Then I had to go through and digitize all 3 years of timesheets that were stored on paper.
After I stored all of the timesheets into the new and improved database I wanted to make the data more accessible for employees. Even though Microsoft Access was less normalized and inefficient the process was simple to use. I ended up making a GUI with WinForms and C# that would connect to the database. This would allow employees to access the data in a simpler more visual manner.
After I made the GUI I wanted to add a function to automatically create invoices for any given job. Because I had all the data already in the database I was able to make a function that automatically created new invoices. This function cut the time that invoicing took by 75% - 85% on average per invoice and allowed any employee to use it.
Website Design
One of the projects at AGAE I am currently in charge of is managing the current website as well as updating the design. The old website was designed in WordPress around 2012 and had not received any updates since then. There was no form of maintenance, like backups, done on the website either.
My first job was to make sure that the old website was backed up properly. I also wanted to migrate the website to a different hosting provider. The hosting provider that the website was originally under did not have any current features that regular hosting providers typically offer. It wouldn't have been possible to update WordPress to the current version with the previous hosting provider due to the current PHP not being available.
After creating backups of the website and migrating hosting providers it was time to start working on a new design of the website. I started with rough sketches on paper which then transferred to a rough prototype in Figma.
I wanted the website to feel alive but because I didn't know how to make a WordPress theme and because I was worried that if I left the company it wouldn't be maintained again for another ten years I decided to use Webflow.
Webflow has excellent interaction animations and the CMS is easy to use as well. After I started developing in Webflow the process went rather quick. With weekly discussions with the VP and Director of Operations to ensure that the quality of the website is on par with AGAE's standards.
Maid1.com
Application Development
After college, my first job was working as an application developer using .NET at Maid1.com. My biggest achievement at Maid1.com was developing a proprietary WinForms application to help with the scheduling.
The scheduling was originally manually tracked on an excel sheet. This was a complicated process because of how the service worked. There were several groups of cleaners and several groups of customers both of which were spread all over our cleaning area.
To calculate the most efficient path from employees to customers we had to start with the employees because not every employee was a driver. The makeup of a group was determined by employees' proximity to a driver and a driver's proximity to customers.
My application solved this problem algorithmically and as a result, increased the number of customers visited per week by an average of 15%.