Micah Pinkley and The Value of Connections Through Dev Catalyst

Before Micah Pinkley came to Dev Catalyst as an intern he knew very little about coding or web development. Everything he uses at his current job was learned through his internship, which relied heavily on connections. Although he graduated two years ago with a computer science degree, the most valuable lessons were learned in the walls of classrooms and here at theCO. It is the practical people skills and real world experience that prepared him for his current position of lead web developer at Master Medical Equipment. 

During Micah’s time at Dev Catalyst as an intern, he wrote and edited most of the materials to make sure they were aligned with the standards, including writing most of the Data Dev course himself. His favorite aspect was going into the classrooms to do workshops and seeing his work in the office being implemented in the classroom. Now, he has been at his current position for about two years and his job involves innovating websites and the user experience. He is also working on research and discussions around a new site for their training academy on the biomedical engineering side, which will help train people outside of Tennessee. 

“Being able to work at Dev Catalyst and take the skills I already had in coding and development and apply those to this new set of languages really set me up for everything I do now,” said Pinkley. “I didn’t have those skills and now that’s pretty much all I do.”

Not only has Micah benefitted from Dev Catalyst, but he continues to invest in the future of people in tech careers through hiring his own intern. When he realized he could use the help of a young professional, he reached out to Christen here at Dev Catalyst and hired a Dev Catalyst alumni as his intern.

“Get out in your community and meet other people who are in the science and coding community,” said Pinkley. “It’s a little difficult to break into the field and get connections if you don’t try. You can sit at home and code all the time, but that isn’t going to get you the experience with people you need.” 

Connections are the key. It all started with Micah who knew someone at Dev Catalyst, and his skills demonstrated here gave him the connections for his current job. And Micah has now invested in the connections to someone younger and is investing in the future of his career. 

“The best thing you can do is to make sure you are prepared to not get locked into the coding mindset,” said Pinkley. “Web development is really all about the user experience. You’re trying to design an application a user can understand and walk away knowing what they need to do without difficulty. Take time to think about the end user and look at the website and think how you would design it better and how good design affected your experience.”

Micah didn’t have coding classes offered to him in highschool, but if he did, it would have prepared him before he arrived at college. Web development is a useful skill that is becoming a part of most jobs, so get out there, learn all that you can and make relationships in the field. 

“My old boss would say, ‘you can teach a monkey to push a button, but you can’t teach him how to talk to people, how to be able to communicate what’s going on, how to properly interact with those around you,’” said Pinkley. “So the connections I made here at theCO were what helped me get my full time job.”