Can’t Stop Chronicles: Jessi Prinner, WP Developer

WordPress Developer

What would any company be without its amazing team members? Here at AdAction, we’ve developed a team of incredible people who use their unique qualities and strengths to make their own impact on the business. 

Who are these people, you ask? We’re going to introduce them to you in our series Can’t Stop Chronicles, to help put a face to the driving force behind our “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop” motto. For our next spotlight, we got to know a little more about Jessi Prinner, WordPress Developer.

What does a typical day look like for you? 

We have a daily standup where the developers, content team members, designers, and the product manager give updates on what we did the day prior and what’s on our to-do list for the current day. It happens in the morning so it’s a good way to start collaboration off for the day, and the team is so new so we’re learning how to work together and learn our process. Then I’ll usually have a couple of other meetings throughout the day to either touch base on a project or kick off a new project. Most of my day is heads-down development. Currently, I’m working on the AdAction website, where we’re transferring it to a new WordPress platform. 

What does your tech stack look like?

For the backend language, I use PHP. On the frontend, it’s HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and jQuery, which is a pretty standard WordPress stack.

What is the most exciting part about your role?

Getting to see something that a lot of people interact with come to life. And getting to put the pieces together and at the end, you have a really cool product that people get to interact with, get information from, and ultimately use on a daily basis. I love the creation aspect. 

What has been your favorite part of the AdAction website redesign? 

From a technical perspective, it’s been really fun to translate this Vue.js site into a WordPress site, because the development was completely different — definitely not just a “copy/paste” job. Basically, I have to recreate it while having it look the exact same, but in a completely different platform. It’s taken some creativity and problem solving to figure out a user-friendly way to develop things like pages, modules, and the blog text editor. 

What’s something new you want to learn this year? 

I really enjoy WordPress development, but I’m always excited to learn new things and expand my repertoire of languages and tools. One thing that’s really new to me is working in AWS, our server platform. I’ve never used it so it’s a little more technical than the platforms I’ve used in the past. There’s a lot of potential with AWS, so it’s really fun to dig in and learn more. I even have the opportunity to enroll in a few courses to learn more about it. 

Is there a piece of advice you would give to developers just starting their careers? 

Don’t be discouraged to ask questions, even if you think it makes it seem like you don’t know what you’re doing. I think developers often get a case of Imposter Syndrome and feel like they have to be complete experts in everything. When someone asks us a question or we have a difficult challenge to tackle, we want to act like we always know what we’re doing, but it doesn’t help you grow if you’re afraid to ask questions.   

How do you keep a healthy work-life balance, especially while working from home? 

A lot of my favorite hobbies are very physical activity-based. I’m really into rock climbing, alpinism, hiking, skiing, and I was even doing swing dancing once a week before the pandemic. Aside from that, I’m usually spending time with friends socializing. Both are a good balance to the heads-down aspect of being a developer. 

How many hikes have you done and which is your favorite? 

I’ve done all 58 fourteeners (mountain peaks exceeding 14,000 feet) in Colorado. My favorite has been West Ridge of El Diente. Now I’m trying to conquer all of the thirteeners. There’s over 600 in Colorado so I’m not in any rush. 

What’s a fun fact about you many people may not know?

I used to be a professional cyclist. I raced for 12 years growing up and competed at Junior Nationals every year, Junior Worlds for 2 years, and then I got on a pro team and raced for 4 years. That was my full-time job and I got to travel around the country and internationally. 

How did you make the switch to become a developer? 

My degree was actually in business. Instead of having summer internships throughout college, I was racing. So when I quit bike racing, I didn’t feel qualified for any work I wanted to do. I decided to pivot and taught myself how to code, got an internship in WordPress development, and then moved to Colorado and got my first job out here. 

First thing you want to do in a perfect “post-pandemic” world? 

I want to have a big party at my house, and by “big” I mean 15 people. There’s gonna be a potluck with lots of food, booze, and no masks. 

Interested in learning more about our one-of-a-kind team? Visit our Careers page to get the inside scoop on our company culture, and check out our open positions if you’re interested in joining the AdAction team.

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