This Thanksgiving season, we thought it would be fun to send around a few question to see what our team is grateful to have this season. Our whole staff answered three simple questions:
- Is there a tech tool/trick that you’re grateful for?
- Is there something you’re grateful to have learned this year?
- Do you have any special Thanksgiving food you’re looking forward to eating?
Here are our answers!
Jim Pugh, Founder and CEO
1. Google Inbox’s ability to have messages reappear in my Inbox at a certain later date has been very handy — I can postpone dealing with non-urgent issues, which helps me get down to Inbox Zero.
2. I’m grateful to have better learned how to organize public events — ShareProgress has hosted a number of happy hours in the last year, and I recently helped organize the first-ever Basic Income Create-A-Thon in San Francisco.
3. Pumpkin cheesecake!
Amar Shah, Backend Developer
1. I’m grateful for Ruby. The language itself is nice, but the community is really what is so beautiful. I never considered that a tech community would count *kindness* as its fundamental core value, but I think we truly have that in Ruby. Read more here!
2. Something that I’m grateful to always be learning is that it’s ok to change your mind, it’s ok to say you’re sorry, and it’s ok to do it *right* now. It’s never too late or too early to make something right. You are not your mistakes.
3. Thanksgiving food is not my cup of tea, so I’m gonna use the holiday to cut back on processed foods and alcohol and pump up my veggies and clean protein.
Cindy Phan, Frontend Developer
1. The developer console — thank you for telling me how my sh*t is broken.
2. How to code so I can make things look beautiful.
3. A few years ago my family decided to opt out of traditional Thanksgiving food, and switched to our Vietnamese favorites – so Banh Xeo :D.
Justine Lam, Frontend Developer
1. Grateful for StackOverflow! I’ve had to google many a time for solutions to bugs and I’m so grateful for the community of developers answering questions and giving such great examples.
2. Learning more and more about Javascript this year, frameworks like ReactJS, and about design patterns.
3. I’m looking forward to eating homemade cranberry sauce.
Anna Schmitz, Customer Satisfaction Associate
1. I’m grateful for Canva, which makes it crazy easy to create graphics for blog posts! Plus, they have tons of cute icons and illustrations that you can use for free (and scroll through for waaay too long…).
2. I’m grateful to have learned how to do basic SQL commands this year (thanks to Andy, Amar, and Jim for helping me learn!). I also feel pretty grateful to have learned how easy it is to provide customer support when your customers are as smart and patient as ours are!
3. Definitely mashed potatoes. But I also have to shoutout orange jello salad, which is a semi-disgusting traditional Midwestern holiday item.
Andy Zack, Data Scientist
1. I’m grateful that R is free and that lots of people volunteer their time to create and contribute to it! (Is that too nerdy?)
2. I’m grateful to have learned about Ben Carson’s rap song. I listened to it on repeat for about 30 minutes when I first heard it.
3. Mashed potatoes!
Sandhya Anantharaman, Data Scientist
1. I’d have to say my favorite tool so far this year is Optimizely–we use it for a variety of different tests, and it’s great!
2. I’ve learned so much! I’ve gotten my hands dirty with SQL, R, Python, and Javascript this year. Glad to have a job where I get to learn to use these tools.
3.It’s a tie between jalapeno cornbread with salted honey butter and roasted brussel sprouts with caramelized onions
What’re you thankful for this year? Are there any amazing tech tips that changed your life this year? Let us know in the comments, and enjoy your long weekend!
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