RJ McLain

I actually first wound up doing some web development way back in middle school, when the Internet was filled with flashy nauseating gifs all over the place. I remember thinking it was fun but never putting much more thought into it at the time, I especially didn’t think it could become a career, but I was very wrong.

As I progressed through college I changed majors a handful of times and wound up as an accountant by the time I graduated, and it was soul-crushing, I hated every minute of it. Eventually, I wound up helping to implement a new software that put me out of a job, and I could not have been happier about it.

I’ve come an incredibly long way since the days of being an accountant. I love what I do now, it’s the perfect combination of art and technology, and I get to work in amazing environments with incredible people.

Afterward, I landed a slightly more administrative type job, but they let me know they really needed to improve in a few areas, and if I could find anything to let them know. Turns out they were still using paper timesheets, so I presented them with some web based time keeping software but they wanted it to be customized for them. So I managed to input my own styles into the project. Trouble was, I had no idea what I was doing, but I didn’t want to lose out on my first tech related opportunity. I decided it was time to sink or learn to swim. I started trying to teach myself but didn’t get quite as far as I would like. Then I found Treehouse.

The way they taught made things click better than it had ever before, and I started to eat it up. Eventually, I finished both the newly customized software and the Front End Development Track on Treehouse. With my project done, I decided to jump into the tech world a bit more and found myself in a brand new environment.

Now that I had learned so much from Treehouse, I didn’t have to hunt for a job. The opportunities came to me, I put out my resume and I was getting as many as a dozen calls a day from recruiters and companies. When I was in accounting I had to struggle to find one interview that would take a chance with me, but in the tech world, I had my pick. Anytime I had the chance to try something I knew I could always learn more at Treehouse just to make sure I really nailed it with any company I met with, and I came in being able to go toe to toe with developers who’d been there for years.

Now I’ve worked with two of the fastest growing companies in Chicago, I just moved from Rightpoint which is a great company, to Merge Design + Interactive, where I could not be happier. I’ve come an incredibly long way since the days of being an accountant. I love what I do now, it’s the perfect combination of art and technology, and I get to work in amazing environments with incredible people.

I’m now hungry to continue learning and to help others along the way. Next on my plate is a toss up between some back end programming for my career or some game development just for fun. And to anyone else out there who might be pretty new, just pick a path and go for it, you never know where it might take you, but no matter what you’ll sure be a better person when you get through it.