Brad Fellers
(Photo Credit: Brad Fellers)
Name: Brad Fellers
Current Job: Senior Software Engineer at OnShift
Favorite restaurant in town? Masthead Brewing Company. They have some of the best craft beer in Northeast Ohio and their Reuben pizza is outstanding.
Favorite thing about Cleveland? Cleveland has so many great things about it but I would have to say the Cleveland Metroparks. I like to go for runs or go on bike rides with the family as much as possible. It’s a great way to just get away from everything and refresh.
Q: What do you do at OnShift? I get to fill a wide variety of roles with OnShift. One of my biggest projects so far has been working on migrating a legacy python application to Kubernetes. During the project, I was able to work on everything from frontend JavaScript to the build pipelines that push the code to the different environments. I love the freedom I have to work on what is needed and the opportunity to come up with creative solutions to difficult problems. Recently, I have moved to a new .NET core application and am excited to continue moving that project forward.
Q: You went from a manager role back to a software development role. Why the shift? I really enjoyed my time as a Team Lead with Hyland, but I missed writing code on a daily basis. The best thing about the leadership role was all the experience I was able to gain when solving problems not directly related to the technical side of developing applications. Now, I have a different perspective and try to apply it whenever I can. I think at some point in my future I would like to move back into a management type role. For now I am energized and looking forward to working every day on thrilling new technologies with my team members.
Q: Much of the Cleveland Technology community uses .NET. Do you think the community would benefit from adopting more modern programming languages? This is a very interesting question! If you would have asked this 5 years ago my answer would be very different than it is today. Microsoft changed things up when they open sourced .NET and started focusing on their cross platform support. When I first started programming, I would turn to open source languages like python, php, and ruby to build my side-projects. However, in the last 3 years I have started using .NET core and other Microsoft tools just as often. Microsoft has really leaned into the open source community; specifically their inclusion of the Linux kernel in windows with WSL is a huge step in the right direction.
Q: How did you initially adjust to being remote-only with your kids at home? My wife and I are so lucky to have two great kids. We have a one year old daughter and a four year old son. They keep our lives interesting and always keep us on our toes. That being said, the first month of working from home with them was a learning experience. My wife and I are very lucky to both work in careers that allow us the freedom to work from home in situations like these, but we quickly found that trying to balance raising young children while attending meetings was a unique challenge. We found our days worked best when I watched the kids until naptime and then worked until 8, while she worked early in the morning until nap time was over. This allowed us to focus on kids when we were with them and work when we were in work mode. Looking back, I am very fortunate for the opportunity to spend so much extra time with my family.
Q: You worked at both small and big companies. What are some of the pros and cons for working at a startup and a corporate? I have been very lucky to work at a wide variety of companies and learn from many smart people. I feel one of the biggest differences between large and small companies are the tasks you have the opportunity to work on. Large companies have had years to help define and sculpt roles within the company while smaller companies have less defined roles and more opportunities to assist in resolving issues that you may not have been aware of in a larger company.