SpatialDev has seen an exponential growth in our team members this last year. This new energy of talent and personalities has been a much-welcomed change. We thought we’d take the next few weeks to introduce the world to some of our newbies, starting with Cole Bessee. Cole started at Critigen as a software developer just a few months ago and has already made a huge impact on our work and our team. Make sure to visit our website to meet all the new team members: http://spatialdev.com/about.html

Here are some questions we threw at Cole to get to know him better:

How long have you been at Critigen and where were you in your previous job?

I have been at Critigen since May 2018. Before that I was working at UW, doing web stuff for the College of the Environment. I was working on marketing websites and some small web apps. I did a lot of php website building and worked with one designer and one other developer and a PM so we were oddly like a consulting group within the college that provided web work for different groups within UW. We offered website and app development as a service for people within the college.

What have you been up to since arriving at Critigen?

For the most part I have been working on a responsive, web-based app for an insurance company client. It’s very different from what I did at UW because it’s a marketing-focused web app with a geospatial component that I wasn’t doing much of previously. In the 4 months I’ve been at Critigen, I’ve been expanding my knowledge of Angular a lot. It’s something that I’ve messed around with in the past but I haven’t used professionally yet so I’ve been learning a lot about that through this project.

Tell us a little bit about yourself:

I grew up in Southern CA (Riverside) which, at the time, I thought was a medium-sized town but turns out it’s a large city (east of LA). My whole family grew up there. I ended up moving to Seattle in 2011 and went to UW and while at UW, I pursued a few different things but kept on taking a lot of classes in basic programming and web-focused, front-end development and database development. Ultimately I ended up in geography with emphasis in GIS so I’ve always liked doing mapping stuff. While I was a student I worked for the University’s IT department and that’s where I found out that I wanted to do more web development rather than traditional GIS. After graduation I started web stuff and now I’m doing web and GIS stuff so it all worked out!

Currently I live in Fremont with my fiancée Ali and our pug Neville. I like golfing, I’m a huge fan of cooking in general and trying out new recipes. My domain is the grill (anything grilled or smoked) especially in the summer. I love watching sports. I grew up playing hockey. My team is the Anaheim Ducks, based on the Mighty Ducks Disney movie.

What’s the most rewarding part of working at Critigen so far?

In general the most exciting is that projects change all the time. You do one thing one day and then something entirely different the next day. There are tons of opportunities to keep learning things. In general, I’m excited to keep learning all the front end javascript frameworks like Angular, React, Vue.js, also native development for iOS and Android development.

Some random questions for you:

What’s the #1 most played song on your device?

Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of The Save Ferris’ cover of Come on Eileen. I seem to drift back to some Ska every so often…

If you won the lottery, what is the first thing you would do?

I would purchase a pro sport team… a hockey team…

What was the first thing you bought with your own money?

Ooooh…. I think probably skate shoes (skateboarding shoes). People were really into those in CA when I was 16. I’m pretty sure they were the extra bulky Etnies variety.

What is the most exciting thing that happened to you in the last year other than starting to work at Critigen?

I got engaged about a month ago!

Congrats Cole and welcome aboard!