The web developer that I interviewed was Greg Collins. Greg is the former chief information officer at EarthLink. Due to unfortunate circumstances EarthLink went through a series of layoffs, which left Greg without a job. Greg now works as a freelancer in the Atlanta area.

Interviewing Greg was very interesting. I found him through linkedIn as a friend of a friends. I asked him if he would mind speaking with me on the phone for half an hour and he said he would be glad to.

As we began our conversation I was instantly amazed that Greg didn’t begin his career in tech, he actually worked in retail as a store manager. His interest in coding and tech began much younger however.

Greg grew up in the suburbs of Tennessee where there were no real coding or web development programs in place. He was first introduced to the web world when a new teacher came to town with a web development background and began a coding club. He was instantly drawn to the club and became a regular at the meetings.

After high school and into college Greg self-taught through different books and mostly trial and error processes. As he was working as a store manager he thought that he might have some talent in the web development business. He sought out a job as a coding expert that came with employment training. From then on, that is what his work has consisted of.

Throughout our conversation I was very interested that the first type of coding language was BASIC, something I had never even heard of. He said that HTML was too futuristic and he didn’t learn that until his employer trained him.

Later in his career Greg turned to app development, which is what he focused on at EarthLink. He claims that the type of coding is very different, but still likes to focus on creating clean code.

Overall I learned a lot from Greg!