Who's Writing This Blog?

Hi and thank you again for checking out my blog. I’m Ryan Griego!

I first got started coding in a web design class that I took as part of a graphic design major at San Francisco State. After getting a peek into what code could produce on the screen, I knew that coding was something I wanted to pursue. In that class, we learned the basics of HTML, CSS, and Javascript.

Scuba.com

After graduating, I started taking online classes at Team Treehouse and would eventually land my first job as a webmaster at Scuba.com. That is right! Webmaster! At Scuba.com, I used my design skills to build various sized print and web graphics for the website and storefront. This was an up-close and personal experience providing value to an e-commerce company that shipped out all its scuba gear from our location in Irvine. After working with so many scuba diving graphics, I decided I had to give it a try. I ended up getting my Scuba certification at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.

While I was between jobs, I continued taking more online courses and looking for additional opportunities to grow my skill set. I started asking my friends if they needed a website built for free. One of them said he wanted a website to share information about his work as a composer and musician. It was around this time I took on my first freelance client and gained some experience building a website with WordPress. The experience working at an ecommerce company like Scuba.com and doing some freelance Wordpress development helped to qualify me into my next role as a front-end developer at an advertising agency named Eight Horses.

Eight Horses

At Eight Horses, I worked with a team of copywriters and graphic designers to deliver to a multitude of clients in a deadline driven environment.

We worked with a number of clients who had websites on platforms such as Wordpress, BigCommerce and Shopify. It was in this role where I was immersed in the process of deadlines, making edits, working with staging and production environments, testing, participating in daily stand-ups. Learning how to juggle projects with varying requirements for different industries has been very helpful in my career.

Soon after the contract ended, the owner of the company Eagle Industrial Group emailed me and asked if I had a chance to discuss a web developer/digital marketing position. Before I went in for the interview, I put together a mockup of an email blast that used their company's branding, products, etc. Shortly after coming home from the interview, I was called with a job offer. Oh, and the company was a 5 minute drive from where I lived.

Eagle Industrial Group

At Eagle Industrial Group, I wore many hats as the email marketer, website designer, project manager and ‘IT guy’. I sent out weekly promotional emails and worked with an advertising agency who was tasked with building out a website for a new brand of garage cabinets that had been recently acquired. I also teamed up with the Director of Marketing to convert 2 Magento ecommerce websites to WordPress e commerce websites. The Director of Marketing played a big role in introducing me to using marketing automation tools, data scraping, Google Sheets wizardry and more. Beyond his technical skills, he was an overall great role model on asking the right questions, building relationships with multiple departments and putting in the extra time. He also genuinely wanted me to succeed in my career.

Learning Fuze Coding Bootcamp

During my time at this company, I started taking part-time classes at a local full-stack software engineering bootcamp named LearningFuze. I was thrilled because it was something I really wanted to do and the company helped pay for the classes.

It was at this bootcamp that I started getting into using Node.js, React, Express, Webpack, and Postgres databases. I also learned how to deploy front-end and full-stack projects to my AWS EC2 server. The teachers were developers who were working in the industry and knew what businesses wanted in real time.

LifeMD

At LifeMD, I started off working under the Director of Email Marketing where I was tasked with building an responsive HTML email app that would allow us to speed up the production and maintenance of existing transactional emails. In addition to transactional emails, I coded and tested promotional emails for our various brands. About 6 months into this role, I asked to move and contribute to the developer team. I joined a team responsible for building the internal applications used by management to monitor patient accounts, prescriptions and flows. It was at this point that I started working with a senior software engineer and someone who would end up being a mentor of mine.

While I would say the coding bootcamp made a big impact on my career, I think meeting and working with my mentor was even more influential. When you’re learning on the job, it makes such a big impact to have someone who will listen to you describe your coding problem and then point you in a direction that will get you there without giving you the answer. You also get to see what’s possible and what it looks like to be a senior developer with great skills. We’re talking 3 nested loops, multi-layered SQL queries, cron jobs that automate daily tasks, and more. I could write a separate post on how influential having a mentor is. I greatly look forward to taking on the role of mentor and paying it forward.

Conclusion

If you’ve made it this far, I’d like to thank you for taking some time to learn more about me. My journey from a graphic design major to a software engineer has been filled with unexpected twists and valuable learning experiences. From my first role as a webmaster at Scuba.com to my current position at LifeMD, each step has taught me something new and reinforced my passion for technology. As I look ahead, I’m excited to keep growing, take on new challenges, and inspire and mentor others in their own journeys.