October 1st… For lots of people, it’s a day when lightweight summer shirts get folded up and put back in the drawers, replaced with big, cosy autumnal comfies.
For some, it marks the start of the spooky season. Others flock to the coffee shops for that first mouthwatering taste of pumpkin spice.
But for us here at Soto, this date is all about celebrating the one and only James Brooks!
Meet James
James joined us at Soto on 1st October 2019 as a Junior Developer. He’d recently completed (or in his words ‘survived’) an apprenticeship, and was looking for a small team where he could further develop his skills. We like to think we won him over during the interview process with our friendly attitudes, passion for the industry, innovative approaches to problem-solving, and diverse projects…
“As soon as I saw they had an office dog, I was all for it”
… but maybe not.
The hidden spark
From the moment we met him, we knew James had something special. Even though he couldn’t see it himself. The problem for James, all those years ago, was that he’d primarily been an IT apprentice focused on the fundamentals of the web. Development was really something that he was teaching himself, so he was lacking in confidence and on-the-job experience. But that didn’t matter to us.
You see, James’ strength has always come from his attitude. If he doesn’t know something, he won’t let that stop him from trying. He’ll do his own research. He’ll look things up. He’ll give it a go. And if it doesn’t work, he keeps coming back to it from different angles. As any developer out there knows, things go right, and things go wrong. James’ response to things going wrong is to grab a coffee, have a bit of moan, and keep plodding on. And that’s exactly the sort of person we need here at Soto.
A real asset
Having recently celebrated James’ 4th work anniversary, it got us thinking about just how far this superstar has come. From a Junior Dev who apparently did ‘lots of head nodding and pretending to sound confident’, he’s now an incredible Developer who essentially leads our support services.
We absolutely love watching James get stuck into a project. Especially when it’s one that he’s really interested in. The thing with James is that he takes something away from every project he’s involved in, and after 4 years working with our clients, he can talk for hours about all sorts of niche industries!
What’s next for James?
We’ve been chatting to James recently about the direction he’d like to head in, and something that’s really important to him is that he’s able to continue building greener websites. As you might already know if you’ve been following our work, sustainability is critical to us, so we have this in common.
“I don’t think it really crosses people’s minds just how much the web affects the real world. On the face of it, there’s nothing physical about websites, but every tiny bit of information that gets fired over the internet uses energy. So anything we can do to make websites more efficient can help”.
Talented, friendly, professional, AND environmentally responsible? What more could we ask for?
We want to finish off by saying this: James, we could not be prouder of the developer you’ve become over the past four years. Keep on being awesome and doing amazing things! We appreciate you.
