PickTrace is proud to be a team of diverse backgrounds, skill sets, and interests. Each week we highlight members of our team to learn about what makes them, and PickTrace, unique.
Get to know Staff Software Engineer, Chris LaRose!
RAPID FIRE:
- Grew Up In: Tucson, Arizona – but we also lived in South Dakota, the UK, Germany, and Florida
- Currently Lives In: San Diego, CA
- Nickname(s): LaRose, only colleagues call me LaRose, I go by Chris normally
- Star Sign: Libra
- Favorite Color: Blue – I like Navy, but I used to like #99CCFF as a web-safe CSS color
- Favorite TV Show: I really like Avatar The Last Airbender (the original)
- Pancakes or Waffles: Pancakes
- Favorite animal: Monkey, that’s my Chinese Zodiac sign
When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
- I like to think I could still grow up haha
- I wanted to be a paleontologist. When I was a kid I got all the dinosaur books from the library.
- My favorite dinosaur was the T-Rex
Tell us about your first role as an engineer – what were you doing?
- I started as a kid, messing around programming HTML and CSS. I was a self taught programmer and my first ‘real programming’ was making bots for a video game called Runescape so I could cheat
- When I was in high school I took a course called Web Development and I was able to skip into the advanced level because I’d already taught myself most of the material. Even then, I was tutoring the other students in the advanced course. Another student suggested that I should pursue it in college and I ended up studying Computer Science
- My first paid job was when I was in high school. I shadowed an engineer doing web development making websites for small biz, and through him I met someone who did contract development and he subcontracted me to do wordpress websites, blogs, custom templates, etc.
What’s a favorite memory from your time at PickTrace?
- I like going to the annual team offsite at Fairfield Farms- Especially the first time going there and getting to meet everyone IRL
What are your hobbies and passions outside of work?
- I do a lot of DIY, fixing things up in the house – a little bit of woodworking sometimes
- I do a lot of hobby programming – some of it is what I’d call ‘home lab’ running services on the local network. Running my own google photos kind of thing, where it’s safe, secure, and the data is local.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received – or do you have a mantra you live by?
- It’s more related to relationships – roughly something like ‘Love is like giving charity to the interpretation of someone else’s actions’. Always assuming people have the best intent.
If you were a fruit or vegetable what would you be and why?
- I’d be ube – a Filipino classic that’s delicious. I grew up with it, my mom really likes it and would get really excited when she found ube ice cream or other ube products. It used to be really hard to find the US.
