Mark Givens

Background

About Mark Givens

I fell into tech almost by total accident. My first big dream in life was a professorship in mathematics, but I eventually found myself unsatisfied with the fact that mathematical "products" are intangible. You can't interact with them; your only real-time feedback loop with them is between you and your head; and you can't spark joy with them. In short, you can't make mathematical "things" and share them, outside of a few very specialized contexts. Lo and behold, a penchant for shell scripting and a few amazingly timed discussions led to my first serious opportunity in software development, and I've never gone back. My primary engineering expertise in focused on the.NET/Azure stack. I've developed numerous applications, especially web MVC, serverless function apps, and even graphical desktop applications in this stack, and I'm extremely capable in C# and C-family languages. My frontend dev work is focused on React/Redux. Of note, I've created several middleware implementations within this framework to enable seamless, source-agnostic data flow and enable frontend developers to do what they do best. In general, I'm not afraid to learn new tech stacks and enjoy the challenge of being the most versatile developer I can. My background affords me unique talents that play well in the business of software. I code for optimization by default, and I understand the economics of velocity against competing engineering concerns. I've worked with teams to enable stepwise reforms, especially in the realm of tech debt, that have yielded efficiency gains and attested jumps in dev cycle QoL. Alongside my technical skill set, however, I also have a distinctly developed literary background and pride myself on my acuity for effective communication. I believe that effective communication requires mutual understanding, intellectual and emotional, and so I strive to foster a team attitude of acceptance, empowerment, and continual excitement generation. I'm extremely proud to have worked with developers and human beings of all stripes, and for the benefit of all I work to maintain an environment that maximizes knowledge transfer and de-silos expertise. The best teams to work with are those where the rockstar is no single individual, but the team itself.