Adam Jasiura.
Developer. Dad. Kimchii Addict.
Honk: What does a day in the life at Honk look like for you?
Adam: After I drop the kid off at school and subway up to the office, we do the daily developer team stand-up meeting, where we check in with what we’re working on. We’re a startup, so our priorities are a moving target, and the team does frequent re-evaluations about what’s most important for each of us to be working on.
Every week has its own flow (don’t push live code on a Friday afternoon. Don’t.) It’s busy, but I never feel like it’s chaotic. I try to focus on the work, and I hustle to contribute however I can with the time I have, until I haul home to make dinner.
Honk: What’s the most exciting project you worked on to-date at Honk?
Adam: Rebuilding and rebranding the Honk app version 2.0 was pretty exciting. The team had built up some experience with the programming tools, and we had the advantage of an already-working app, with customers. We got to put down a layer of design ideas for branding and user interface, and then we were off.
Some days programming is methodical detective work, or careful modelling, but this felt like a huge amount of productivity in a short amount of time, and every day we got a lot of visible feedback. Plus, we had divided the work up in such a way that each developer worked on pieces, and wiring them together was really satisfying.
I hope our customers like it – we’re not done yet!
Pictured above: One of Adam’s top waffle recipes at the moment. Based off of Food.com‘s Waffle of Insane Greatness Recipe.
Honk: Your journey leading up to Honk isn’t what we’d call the typical developer’s path. Tell us a little about your past work experience, and how you landed at Honk as developer.
Adam: Yeah… I definitely engaged in a little career randomness. I don’t have a technical education at all (my degree is in Latin, and I have a Bachelor of Education). I’m working as a developer now because I obtained an HR certification, and I moved back to Toronto hoping to do HR for medium-sized tech companies. I made some dev friends and worked on my programming in my off time to make myself more marketable. I ended up getting a small internship with a knowledgeable senior developer at a real-estate startup doing just code work, and I’ve been doing it ever since.
Before that, I also left a trail of past attempted careers, including: teacher, barista, insurance salesman, travelling document imager (which included living in hotels for 2 years), drywaller, lumber mill labourer, newspaper ad designer… plus I had a job where I got to dress up and act like a fur trader.
Honk: When not at work, where are you most likely to be found?
Adam: The kitchen, probably. I’m constantly tweaking the family waffle recipe. My daughter and I are still somehow into Pokemon GO, so every outing is an opportunity to go a-catching. I also just got back into jujitsu after a too-long break – it’s great for clearing away the day’s concerns, and it carries over to so many other parts of life.
