My name is Steven! I live & work in Bolton. Here is pretty much my life story.

I'd always wanted to work in software development but never really knew how to get my foot in the door. Since a teen I've become to love problem solving and creating tangible things for myself and others to enjoy. I decided in 2022 to start do something I know I love; from the people that grew to know me, I was hearing more and more the same phrase:

Why are you here? Why don't you work in IT?

Change started in July 2022, in a completely conincidental conversation between a family member and their collegue (a recruiter).
"He's not happy where he is..."
"Is he any good with computers?"
I'd worked in my current role for 3 years at this time. I had plans to progress, my company however did not. I was struggling and blamed myself. I was at my lowest point when this dilemma came up. I have bills to pay, I'm struggling to do well here, what makes me think I'll do well elsewhere? Why can't I just care less which is essential to better perfomance? Family work here - Will I let them down?

I struggled to make a decision, but took the leap and applied. The more I learned about this "Master Data Analyist" role, the more I realised how happy I was to be applying for it. I started a 6 month temporary contract with Sherwin-Williams on 19th August 2022. March 2023 it was confirmed due to skills and perfomance, Sherwin will extend to Dec 2023.

Many collegues prompted me to apply for a permenant role that appeared - "Product Information Specialist". I applied.
As of September 2023, I was accepted for the job.

I'm so lucky to work here. Sherwin is excellent at understanding diversity and differences in people. In my experience, Sherwin creates a culture where equity over equality is clearly understood and demonstrated.
I used work extra hours because I had to, now it's because I love what I do.

How did it all start?

I started learning programming when I was introduced to Lua through a game as a kid. I was able to pick up scripting easier than my good friend I used to play these game with, so ended up teaching him most of what I knew so he could go on and create his own content & games. I began to love figuring out the little solutions to a bigger problem and seeing it come to life in front of me.

I created my own website in secondary school for my classmates to do anything but their class-work on around 2009. It had a messageboard (inspired by various messageboards) and flash-based games that my classmates could enjoy in class (if they had the money for it). My classmates were able to buy vouchers which they could redeem for access to certain games the site. This would pay for more domain names (.info domains were 99p a year!) when the IT department filtered a domain after catching up with my antics. Everything was hand made using PHP. From authentication, transactions and rendering out printable vouchers.
Take a small look at the remains of my first ever website on archive.org

I completed a Level 3 Software Development course in college achieving a DDM. My favourite assigment was a Cocos2D-x based iOS platformer game, of which the protagonist was my friend and classmate (who hates the sun), the character proceeds along a sunny beach in a dark hoodie collecting monster cans and avoiding sunlight, complete with sound effects, health and a theme song which I composed myself on garageband.

After college I moved onto university completing two years of study and leaving with a Diploma of Higher Education in Computer Science. I picked up a number of skills, from algorithms and data structures, to data engineering with Oracle databases. I was late to the game on securing a placement, which restricted my options upon leaving university. I've followed friends around to various comfortably-paid roles, however they simply do not fulfil my life goals or satisfy my creative desire.

I decided to take on a number of projects across the years to improve my knowledge and build up a portfolio, so I can prove that I have the skills required to think creatively, create beautiful websites and functional software.

Hop, skip and jump some of the cool things I've made in the past, to let you know I'll be updating my portfolio with more content as and when I'm able to find and put together everything in a format for web. I'd love to show you what other things I'm capable of. It includes plenty of PHP, a good side of C# and a sprinkle of Objective-C among others.

If you'd like to get in touch please contact me.

Thanks for reading!

Steve