Get to Know Cody

Learn about Cody’s background in tech, how he got started with a hobby in game programming, to freelancing web development, to joining and growing with the Bixly team! Also, hear about his other passions like photography and sailing.

Cody:

I was doing simple programming for games and stuff since I was 12 years old.

Cris:

Flash, gaming, moving over to the web, seeing the industries pivot. What’s new? What’s exciting right now out there? 

Cris:

Cody, I’m super excited and stoked. We are doing a little series called getting to know the Bixly team and so, we get to jump in and talk about who Cody is.

Cody:

Really exciting. Who is that guy?

Cris:

I know. Well, you’re going to tell me. So Cody, what’s your background and how did you get into tech?

Cody:

Well, my background, at least from a professional standpoint nowadays is I do a lot of things. Everything from front end to backend work, the CIS admin work to even soft skills and simple management and things like that as necessary. How that evolved and how I got there started; really I’m one of those true geeks that ended up getting into computer technology at a young, young age. Like I was doing simple programming for games and stuff since  I was 12 years old.

Cris:

Nice.

Cody:

And that just continued on because I was in high school, right? There’s not a whole lot to do past that point, but …

Cris:

To interject. So what were you programming in? You said you’re programming games, 12 years old, what’s the tech stack?

Cody:

Mostly Lua. Lua was a big language that was popular in things like GMOD and other games from Valve and things like that. So I was programming and mostly that, which is a C style language and not doing a whole lot of things or being paid for it, but just having a good time. And from there, I continued that until I was midway through actually being in high school and I went to a high tech high school called CART, or the Center for Advanced Research & Technology here in the Fresno area. And I continued working on stuff through there and just doing simple programming projects, a lot of team based work, enjoying it. Did stuff in Flash, back when that was a thing still.

Cody:

And Java as well, but didn’t really get into web programming, which is where I do most of my stuff now until way later.

Cris:

Yeah. What was the pivot to get you there, to the web side of stuff?

Cody:

So I started with an internship after high school for a local game development company and worked in mostly Flash at the time and that was where I was going because it was still hot at the time everyone was like, “Flash is the future.”

Cris:

Right.

Cody:

Again, RIP.

Cris:

RIP, yeah.

Cody:

But from there that eventually fizzled out because they’re a local dev company for game development and that’s just how things go sometimes.

Cris:

Sure.

Cody:

But I started to do independent contracting and I noticed that while doing independent contracting web development was a huge thing. And I was only a couple of steps away from being able to know the skills necessary, so that’s exactly what I did. I just pivoted my own skills to adapt to the market and eventually got into web development.

Cris:

That’s good. So obviously, you talked a lot about Flash, gaming, moving over to web, seeing the industries pivot… It’s obviously an ever-changing and moving landscape. So now, I mean, you’re even dabbling in more server-side stuff. You’re now heading up our DevOps department. There’s lots of changes. You’re seeing the overarching flow of projects. What’s new, what’s exciting right now out there? What makes you excited to move forward in the next year or two, five, so on and so forth? I mean, five years who knows what’s going to be here.

Cody:

Yeah, truly.

Cris:

What’s new and exciting right now for you? What makes you wake up every morning and be like, “I’m excited. Let’s do this.”

Cody:

I think there’s not really a specific language or framework, because there’s always new stuff coming out, especially in the web dev world, we have JavaScript, which is like, what’s the flavor of the month? It’s a very common thing. But I think the thing that excites me the most about the web development world is that we are slowly embracing the maturity concepts that came from the traditional programming world because until only recently, was it actually, I guess, a thing that anyone would bother with enterprise scale assurance that a program would like go well with like dev ops and stuff of that sort.

Cris:

Yeah.

Cody:

So that’s finally being embraced and that’s also a thing we’re doing now too. And I think that alone will make the whole industry become the next answer to everything in a way. It’s already being purported as that. Everyone’s like, “We’ve got to make a web based everything.” But I think does that actually work in today’s climate? I think in the past, it really didn’t because it was a lot of cowboy coding and just, let’s have a team of two people go at this and they’ll get it done. But now that we’re really getting into those enterprise scale projects that need hundreds to thousands or millions of people to support.

Cris:

What do you enjoy about Bixly and in particular — I’m going to let you stroke your own ego a little bit — how do you feel that you have helped change Bixly for the better in the last couple of years?

Cody:

Okay, so that’s a two-sided question a little bit. For one, what do I enjoy about Bixly, right? So I think a good portion of that comes from the last thing I said, which was when I was an independent contractor. I had to worry about my own sales. I’d worry about all this stuff that’s the meta business, what you worry about forming.

Cris:

Right, 100%.

Cody:

And I, as a technologist, appreciate that I can defer that to someone else that I know will feed me work to do, because that’s the work I want to do.

Cris:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Cody:

If I could be an independent contractor and not have to worry about my sales or not have to worry about what’s coming next and not do my own taxes, the business tax, I should say, I file my taxes IRS, but then I probably wouldn’t be working here. I’d probably be doing that if I didn’t have to worry about it.

Cris:

Sure.

Cody:

But that’s not the real world. So as a programmer and someone who enjoys that, that’s why I’m at Bixly is that I have the support of a team to allow me to do what I love doing, which is coding and helping clients and figuring out projects and answering difficult problems.

Cris:

Cool. So that’s what you’re particularly good at?

Cody:

Yeah, that’s what I’m pretty good at. And a lot of other things I’ve discovered over the years working here too.

Cris:

Such as?

Cody:

Well, I’m involved in sysadmin work, which is a whole other area that I didn’t really think I’d pivot to in the early days of my career. And that encompasses everything from setting up the actual servers to actually implementing DevOps policies within development projects. So that means telling programmers, “You guys need to review your code. You guys need to set up automatic testing,” this stuff where it’s more consultant work. And everything from managing my own projects and what not. And trying to consult on sales leads that are coming in and things of that sort. Those are some stuff I didn’t really imagine I would be doing a few years ago, but now I’m doing it and it’s not too bad. I like it.

Cris:

Yeah. And you and I were even having a conversation yesterday and one thing I would say you’re very good at that I’m continuing to see grow here is you come from that development background. You’ve pivoted now over to a sysadmin style role, focusing on DevOps. You have been in the trenches, so to say, for lack of a better term, and you have a really good knowledge and understanding of all the ways that a project should work.

Cris:

And so, the way that we’re setting up these workflows, you have a developer mindset to make sure that when you’re building these workflows that you’re making the jobs of the rest of our developers, designers, other sysadmins easier because you’ve been there and you know it, and you’ve done it rather than being someone on the outside that’s just saying, “Well follow these practices, it’ll make it better.” I think you’re very good having had the in the trenches experience of helping us build out those stats, which is cool.

Cody:

Yeah.

Cris:

And I appreciate it.

Cody:

And on the flip side too, I’ve actually had a bit of experience, obviously my background in independent contracting and just generally dealing with a lot of various businesses, I have an eye for the business questions that end up involving around the programmers. It’s like, okay, we need to make this dropdown, but you know what are the business implications? Are users going to be engaged? Is this going to have a call to action? Those kinds of questions that are a little deeper than just get it done. And I think I have a good mind of asking why for those types of things to make sure that we’re having the best interest for the client at heart, that kind of a thing.

Cris:

Sure. Outside of tech, what else are you passionate about? What do you like to do?

Cody:

Oh, there’s a lot of things, to be honest, I’m a man of many hobbies. But the top ones, you can find me on Instagram. I’m a photographer. I like doing a lot of photography work.

Cris:

You’re a very good photographer.

Cody:

I appreciate that. That actually means a lot.

Cris:

No, really. Genuinely, you’re a very good photographer.

Cody:

And so, I do that work. And also, another big passion of mine is sailing, which is very weird for a person who has most of his life lived 200 miles inland, but that is a thing I do. And a thing I really enjoy doing and hope to continue for a long, long, long time.

Cris:

So to pivot back, because we just moved past it. You are a very good photographer. You’re on Instagram. How do people find you?

Cody:

At CocoSupremo, that’s my name. I have plenty of photos and always work on commissions too. So, yeah.

Cris:

Sweet. Very cool. Dude, we have the boat, man. We’ve got to get out on that sometime.

Cody:

Yeah, I know we talk about it and then it never happens, but it’s still there. It’s in San Pedro.

Cris:

Well that’s good.

Cody:

Yeah.

Cris:

Anything else Cody as we wrap up here, things that, whether it’s tech related or just personal side, things that would help us help someone watching this video get to know you a little bit better and feel that much more connected to you and in turn bixly as a company?

Cody:

Well, I think one big thing to hit home is that a lot of the people here at Bixly, myself included, we always try and act with our client’s interest at heart. Whenever I’m doing something on a project, even if it’s something that a client has asked me specifically to do, if I really am concerned for, let’s say their business’ longevity, I’ll simply ask them the question of, “Okay, I understand that we need this done, but what’s the goal behind it because I want to understand what you need so I can help make recommendations against it?”

Cody:

And I think that’s a big part of what makes Bixly and myself as a part of it, a little different than a lot of other consultancies within the tech world is that we really do want to understand your business so that we can help it grow in the way that you actually desire. Because a lot of the time, the translation from business to tech is not one-to-one. It takes some interpretation by people on both sides and we want to be there along with you to help with that process, so that’s a big part of it and that’s what I like to offer to bixly and I think that’s what bixly likes to offer to our clients.

Cris:

I would agree.

Alexandra:

Thank you for joining us for this episode of bixly Tech Tuesday. I hope you enjoyed our conversation around how to really use your technology in your business to help you be productive, to really help you support your team. If you have any questions about what we talked about today, go ahead and leave those in the comment section down below. In addition, you can find a link to our free custom software guide in the description to this video, and that will help you plan out your next project. You can also find a link to our website, bixly.com where if you click that free app validation button at the top, you will get an hour free with Cris to talk about your next app idea. Until next time, this has been a bixly Tech Tuesday.