Email: alex [dot] makijokela [at] google's mail service
tl;dr deeply versatile eng manager with a broad+deep technical background and startup experience
I'd love to find a position either as an engineering manager or a senior engineer on a team that can be remote or hybrid in Denver. I enjoy building things, but I actually really enjoy and I’m good at the organizational and leadership aspects of work - my past cofounders can attest to this. I'm happy to build some stuff on the way there if that's what a company needs.
I have software engineering experience all the way up and down the stack, in multiple languages (primarily Python) and on multiple cloud providers, and across a lot of different fields and weird edge cases between software, hardware, manufacturing, machine learning, and so on. I was a mechie before I was a software engineer, and I've been a lot of flavors of software engineer.
I've also started companies, been an Artist in Residence at GitHub (for the Arctic Code Vault), done operational consulting for one of Outside magazine's Best Companies to Work For, and in general my resume is peppered with unconventional cross-functional projects and skillsets and leadership roles. I navigate ambiguity skillfully, learn fast, communicate effectiely, and generally have great EQ and nonlinear/network effects.
I'm prioritizing good work relationships, culture of healthy work-life balance, comp over equity (I just got out of an all-consuming startup and need to rebalance) - I'm open to something at a larger company if the fit is right.
+1. Writing scrapers and even API calls were the step for me that went from "I'm making my computer do something" to "I'm making my computer do something that's interacting with the outside world on terms that I programmed it to. Whoa! I can do a lot of different variations of this!"
This tiny script keeps my gmail inbox clean and manageable.
It auto-archives any emails older than 2 days (you can change this obviously) unless they're starred - this changes my email experience in two ways:
1) My email inbox ONLY has emails that are either new or that I decided were relevant. I have two days to notice this.
2) When I'm scanning my email, if I see something important that I don't have time to deal with, I can star it and keep moving and know that it'll still be visible and in a manageable-size queue later.
When I travel off-grid it is a bit of a pain since I have to go through a lot of archives, but that can be addressed by just turning it off.
I also ruthlessly unsubscribe to things I've stopped reading to keep everything manageable.
Strengths: Leadership, management, broad+deep technical experience, emotional intelligence and maturity, creative nonlinear out-of-box thinking, operations, strategy, community bulding, deep cross-functionality. You can put me anywhere in an organization and I can traverse skillfully, and build relationships and speak the languages of every department in a matter of months if not weeks. Comfortable with both internal and client-facing leadership.
Other accomplishments:
2020 GitHub Resident AI Artist, Arctic Code Vault
-https://alexmakijokela.medium.com/open-source-artifact-a-wal...
-https://github.blog/2022-09-20-if-you-dont-make-it-beautiful...
2x Founder, Spirit & Glitch (2018 AI art clothing company), GreenCubes (2021 mobile automated agricultural greenhouse company)
Independent management consultant for Outside's #2 Best Place to Work (Peak Design) - I understand operations deeply, think in systems and patterns, and deeply value company culture
Email: firstname dot lastname (without hyphen) at google's most well-known mail service
Desired positions: Leading product and engineering teams, open to senior engineering roles (preference for backend/data) with opportunity to move towards leadership as we build trust and rapport. Potentially game-changing in a director role if it's an industry/product that leverages my strengths and experience
Priorities re companies:
-Emotionally mature leadership, who understands the value of healthy culture with good work-life balance
-Solid market position and financials
-Doing some form of good in the world. Knowing that my work improves peoples' lives is important to me.
-Stability (I love the dynamism of early stage startups but I'm more interested in stability right now - let me bring my dynamism to your slightly more mature organization)
-Ability to be cross-functional and traverse - I'm at my most potent when I can weave through an organization and create the kind of value you can only see when you speak all of the business and technical languages
-Ability to lead and manage and mentor - I have a lot to share and helping others grow and mature is deeply rewarding to me
-Pay - I'm coming out of a couple years of early stage startups and I want to refuel and re-resource financially for a little while.
Getting a JSON error. I think there are some bugs or uncaught characters in the text processing for the invitation to paste your resume / job description (which people will do from a variety of sources)
I'd love to play with this if I could get it to work.
Typically it gets that error because of two issues: Weird formatting (especially bullet points) in the cover letter or because the documents pasted are too long. Try repasting without formatting.
Following my creative desires has taken me out of my corporate engineering job and through waves of wonder and waves of and disaster (including financial, for awhile), and now after all of that, to a project I'm perfectly suited for and deeply passionate about, with some of the smartest people I've ever met.
The thing about sayings like this - they're not just a thing you do, they're a practice you develop and a flow that you become more skillful at adhering to. I've been through hell and back following what's felt true to my creative instincts, and as brutal as it's been, along the way I've by necessity internalized what meaningful work means to me and what freedoms I'm (not) willing to sacrifice.
It can be a brutal path, but (at least in my experience) every level you become more skillful at it and the flexibility and sense of trust in yourself translate in powerful ways to creative and professional potency. If you intentionally hone them in that direction.
