The First Year at Little Taller — Elise
Elise was the very first team member to join Little Taller one year ago. It’s been a real pleasure watching our multi-talented and self-motivated Elise grow a little taller this past year, all the while helping clients and team members grow a little taller as well. We wanted to take a minute to understand her perspective after the first year so we chatted a little bit about development, upcoming goals and tattoos.
LT : What’s your title and then what do you actually do every day?
Elise : I am a web developer and what I actually do every day is help maintain the ongoing web projects. I work in content management systems like WordPress and Drupal and I also work with HTML and CSS on the front end development. So all of that means that I do a lot of the visuals on web sites and I also manage some of the databases that store the information on the back end as well.
LT : How do you explain your job to other people that don’t really know.
Elise : My first response is always “I’m a full staff web developer” and then I wait and see if they ask me what that means. If they ask, I just explain to them that “Oh well I control the front end of the website that you see. I style all of that so I pick the font and the colors and the layout and then I also manage all of the information that passes through the website with the tools of a content management system. Which means if you are submitting forms or have a password and username I am also managing that information as well.
LT : Oh that’s a super helpful way to explain it all. Now getting into the whole workivarsery thing, what’s your biggest takeaway from year one?
Elise : No matter how much you think you know about something you should continually keep learning about it and I think that’s just a good rule for everything in life. You should always be learning even if you think you’re really good at something because there are different perspectives. Especially working on teams and other people view things differently and so learning from those around you really helps you get a broader knowledge on a topic. For example working I’ve been working alongside Yani, one of our interns, on websites and she’ll come to me with these questions that strike me out of nowhere because I don’t think of things the same way she does. She really brings her own perspective, so now I have to try to find words that she will then understand and relate to. It helps me understand something even better and I am always googling things to find better ways to do them. So that’s my number one takeaway. Always keep learning because there’s almost infinite ways to do a specific task.
LT : That’s such a good catch all for it, and for everything you do in life, too
Elise : And as a side note I’m still in school as well. For a computer science degree and I’m in a class right now that I thought would be a blow off because it’s a sheer amounts HTML. Which is what I do every day for a job. I can tell you what that is a hard class. I do this every day but taking it I’m learning all this new stuff. It’s just always been learning.
LT : So what did you do before development at Little Taller and how was that jump?
Elise : Before this I have not had very much web development experience I had more graphic design experience. I had been doing freelance work for rural hospital cooperatives in Wisconsin. So I was creating logos and brand identities. This was more of a jump towards what I enjoy because I am always drawn to code and programming. So for me it was a jump towards what I want to pursue as a career. At the same time, I had also come from GCU. I graduated with the web design degree and even with that i still felt like it was a bit of a jarring jolt because they can’t teach you everything you need to know in school. You have to learn some of it as you go. So there was a really rough transition for about two weeks where I had no idea what I was doing and it was beyond anything I had done in school. And it took me about two weeks to finally get my footing and continue on from there. But I feel like that’s probably pretty normal when you get a first job out of college. You think you have a good grasp on it and you immediately realize you don’t.
LT : So you didn’t have any development experience before? How did you manage to learn as you go for that, development is a big thing to take on.
Elise : I would just look up tutorials online. I would watch tons of videos. I was always trying to find resources like Code Academy, where they teach you language basics for programming. So I was always trying to apply what I knew with the little bits I could and then gather kind of project specific information as I went. And in that I spent my free time constantly trying to fill in the rest of what I was not learning when I was focusing on the one specific answer to a problem I was facing with a job. I felt like with the first project I did for Scottsdale Artists’ School, I would string along problem after problem just trying to get through it, using my free time to fill in everything else I was missing along the way.
LT : What’s your ideal working condition?
Elise : My ideal working situation is kind of having a dedicated space in a quiet location. I enjoy the idea of like co-working spaces and working in coffee shops but I get really easily distracted by the people. So for me my ideal working space is a dedicated desk that’s away from everything else with a nice neutral background for meetings and it just has basically office five as my notebooks. I take notes on everything so I have my pens, my five notebooks and my computer, and that’s pretty much it. It’s just a space where I can focus in on the task at hand and not get distracted by other people or other noises.
LT : So remote working really is your perfect spot then?
Elise : Yep, it definitely is.
LT : Okay. So what accomplishment are you most proud of in the last year?
Elise : The accomplishment I’m most proud of is actually working with our intern, Yani. That’s because my ultimate goal is to someday teach programming at the college level. So for me I love projects where I get to help an intern and kind of help train them and teach them in some of the processes of that were a little hard for me to grasp. When I started I didn’t really have anyone to necessarily guide me through it the way that we are now setting up with our intern program. I enjoy the opportunity to kind of take on the interns and help them and coach them and train them. To me it’s another opportunity to practice my teaching skills and that’s really what I love. I love teaching and I love helping others understand. I’m most proud of watching them succeed and watching them grasp a concept. You see their eyes light up a little bit with “Oh now it makes sense” and kind of helping them understand rather than just try to get through their workday and so they have a get deeper knowledge of the concepts.
LT : What you looking forward to the next year?
Elise : I think just where we’re gonna go next. I feel like we are growing at such an exponential rate as a company and all of a sudden too. It’s just like suddenly everybody wants stuff and everybody’s on projects and it’s great. So I guess I’m just excited to see what comes next and tackle any challenges that come up with it. I mean when ASU was kind of in the works we didn’t know if it was going to be me or Sidney on development (it ended up being Sidney), but in preparation we had to learn an entirely new content management system. It was days and days of just cramming all this knowledge on a new system So things like that where it’s like I can’t wait for what’s next. What are we gonna have to learn next for a new project. It’s always exciting.
LT : What ensures you can do your job effectively?
Elise : For me, I think it’s communication. The clearer and more direct communication can be, the better I can do my job. So that’s something I’ve really been working on too. I’m a very quiet person and I don’t like to bother people. I don’t want to ask questions that are unnecessary. So it’s been a learning process for me but I am working on speaking up and saying “Hey, I don’t understand the whole task that you gave me, instead of going in blind and trying to figure it out and stumble through it can you give me some more clarification?” Having that communication line open where you can ask for help is crucial.
LT : What responsibilities do you have that you enjoy the most and which ones do enjoy the least?
Elise : I think what I enjoy most is creating new websites. I like taking on projects that are entirely brand new and especially when the clients are really excited about it. For example Sci Tech was a really fun project for me because the team was so excited to work with us and they had so many big goals and it was really neat to build it up from the ground up until it was exactly what they wanted. I think that the whole process was really fun because they didn’t have anything at the time when we started they had like nothing towards their goal. So we build it together and that was really neat. I guess my least favorite would be maintaining existing websites. We don’t have much freedom. It’s more just to fix this one thing that was broken or add another entry for this. It’s okay because at least it’s kind of calm work. We know what we’re doing but I enjoy the projects where we get to collaborate together with the team and create something new and interesting.
LT : What do you like most about working at Little Taller?
Elise : The freedom to learn and grow as a part of the job where we aren’t always just doing the same things. It’s always new every project is a brand new learning experience. So I like that because we don’t get stuck in a routine very much here and we’re always expanding and growing ourselves in our company and our skillset. It’s constant growth and constant change and I think that’s really fun.
LT : It certainly keeps every day interesting. What are some goals you have coming up?
Elise : I’m entering my last year of school and I’m very excited about that. So I think goals for me are just balancing everything because I am trying to balance school and life and work all at once. So my goals are always kind of ongoing and they’re just maintaining that balance and pushing myself to do better at everything I can. So that’s kind of my ongoing goal is to just keep going and always grow and always push myself to do the best I can. Someday I’ll have a more concrete goal of graduation but right now that’s still too far away.
LT : Your school is online as well right? How do you handle working remotely and going to school online? That must get pretty isolating.
Elise : That’s kind of a struggle. I mean, especially as I just moved. Everything is new and I’m kind of still working on getting plugged in. But for me my social outlet is mostly at my church so I’m trying to get plugged in with like a community group that’s local to me. I hang out with my brother but he comes home from work at 9 o’clock at night so I’m ready to hang out and I’m like
“Hi! How are you? How was your day? Tell me stuff!” but he’s ready for bed and I think “Well I didn’t talk to another human in person today.” I feel like I’m just craving human interaction.
LT : What is one professional skill you are currently looking to develop?
Elise : Python. I know a little bit of Python but I would love to expand on that. I’m not sure that it will really come into play in the near future but maybe when Little Taller gets more app development work. It’s more used for app development which I know is something we want to do more of in the future. I would love to learn Python because programming is a really creative outlet for me. So I would love to get better at it and expand into it and just know more about it.
LT : OK. So this last one is kind of a catch all. It could be anything, so if you could be an expert in anything what would it be. Like snap your fingers you don’t have to take the time to learn, you’re just instantly an expert.
Elise : Does it have to be related to this job?
LT : Absolutely not.
Elise : I would love to be a tattoo artist. I’d love to be super good at it.
LT : Do you have tattoos?
Elise : Yeah I do. In fact, I got one this weekend at a Harry Potter convention.
LT : So when we check back in next year, it’s safe to assume that in addition to asking about personal and professional growth, we’ll need to ask about new tattoos?
Elise : Absolutely.
It was great getting to see more of Elise’s perspective of her first year at Little Taller. I know we’re all excited about what’s going to come next from her.
