Meet The Team - Aaron - Development Team Lead

Tell us a little about yourself, Aaron!

‍Hey, I’m Aaron! I grew up in the east end of St. John’s, and you can actually see the house I grew up in from our office view. I’d consider myself a tinkerer. Some of my many hobbies include writing code, electrical design, photography, Deep Learning, Genetic Engineering, guitar, hiking, and a bunch more. When I’m not nerding out I can usually be found hanging out with Danielle and my two awesome boys, Charles and Harrison.

How did you first get into software development?

It started for me at a very young age. I was obsessed with technology. In junior high I built my own computer from scrap parts I could find in the classifieds. That led to robotics club, then I was writing video games in high school.

I studied Game Dev and Engineering in college. After that I started playing around with cameras and did media production for a while. Then when I had kids I realized I wanted to be home with them more and spend less time on the road, so I started my career writing code—and I’ve been living the dream ever since!

Why did you first join CoLab and what gets you most excited about working here?

The funny thing about CoLab is that it wasn’t even on my radar. Jeremy’s sister was my son’s therapist and she was always talking about CoLab and sharing the hype. After she mentioned Y Combinator it really piqued my interest. So I started looking into CoLab and the more I dug into the company, the people, the problem—the more I wanted to be part of it.

From what I could tell, they had the best people there, founders that truly care, an allstar team solving difficult problems, and they were changing the way the world builds things. That’s definitely something I can get down with. So even though I was in the middle of my interview process at Amazon, I dropped it  and reached out to Jeremy… and the rest is history.

The part that gets me most excited about working at CoLab is the people. We have the best people who all truly care about one another. It almost feels more like a second family that’s working together to solve a problem than a job (if that makes any sense).

If you had to be shipwrecked on a deserted island, but all your human needs—such as food and water—were taken care of, what two items would you want to have with you?

My family! And I feel like if I had my best friends with me it could be a fun adventure. I guess technically that’s three items but I’m gonna cheat on this one.