Michael Decleene Email & Phone Number

Chapter 1: The Sales DaysThe first time that I was in college, I was an Economics major. In my last semester of college, I took a required course where I got to build a web page using HTML and CSS. I LOVED IT. It was the perfect match between creativity and numbers for me. It was the first time that I had done anything like this, and watching the changes I type into a computer come to life was mind-boggling to me; however, since I was in my last semester, it was too late for a change in my major. I went ahead and graduated.I entered a job market looking for jobs in analytics. After months of searching, I decided to take a job in sales. As a problem solver, there were aspects that I was drawn to. I was fascinated by cold calling, and how a slight change in a script could lead to better results, but at the end of the day, no sales person can get a yes every single time. The no's got to me even in months where I would crush my quota.Chapter 2: The Transition PeriodI am lucky enough to have a wife who told me that she wanted me to be happy in my work. She asked, "If you could do anything professionally, what would it be?"I thought hard about it, and I remembered the HTML class, and the pride that I had in making that web page. After telling her my answer, she asked, "What do we have to do to make that happen?"I went back to school as a computer science major. I kept working full time for the first two years of my college course work and then my current employer allowed me to do a hybrid sales, application developer internship position and drop my hours down to just under 30 while I was a full time student.Eventually I graduated with a 3.92 and got hired on as a software developer by the company that I've been working for since 2017.Chapter 3: The Career I LoveMy career as a software engineer has been challenging in all of the best ways. Every day, I get to use my creativity to take the goals that the business has and make something new. It is so incredibly rewarding to have an end user say, "We would like this specific thing." and to slowly turn it into a reality step by step. It is so incredibly rewarding to be stuck on a problem, and to figure it out. It is so incredibly rewarding to work for a company that gave me an internship which aligned with my long-term goals, even though I was more profitable initially to them in sales. Every day that I get to learn something new, build something new, or optimize something old, it is so incredibly rewarding.

Listed skills include Survey Design, Survey Research, Analysis, Critical Thinking, and 3 others.