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Here's a summary of the 134 things that I've tagged work on this site.
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The End of Free Boi Summer
Retired folks often say that they somehow become busier after they stop working. This year I got a taste of what that meant. In April, I quit my job to take a break, reset, and enjoy a summer off with my educator wife. Those planned few months turned into 6+ months of "pretirement" and it was incredible. I wasn't necessarily busier in pretirement, but I was definitely more active and more productive with my own wants... read more
Joining and Leaving PayPal
I recently decided to leave PayPal so that I could take a few months off and recharge. Here's how I got to where I'm at... 2013-2015: Building Modest Building a startup is quite an experience. In our situation, it was even more strange because we had a team of 4 with a nice chunk of funding before we even knew what to build. So, we spent ~6 months flipping back and forth between ideating and contracting while we figured things out... read more
Latest press articles
Des Moines duo who coded for Obama 2012 pursue own startups
At Big Omaha in May 2011, Derek Brooks (left) and Nick Leeper discussed working for Barack Obama's re-election campaign. They both took jobs with the campaign later that year. Des Moines software developer Derek Brooks never thought he would find himself working on a political campaign. A registered independent voter, he was never very interested in politics. But over the past year, Brooks, along with fellow Iowan and friend Nick Leeper, was employed by President Barack Obama's re-election campaign in Chicago... read more
Iowans put their tech skills to work for Obama
Derek Brooks and Nick Leeper spent long hours writing code for donation and voter websites. Nick Leeper, left, and Derek Brooks, both software engineers in their early 30s, left good jobs in Des Moines to move to Chicago and work for the Obama campaign. They built software to track voters that helped secure Obama's victory. Photo by Christopher Gannon of The Des Moines Register Derek Brooks of Ankeny was just one of 10,000 in the crowd last fall when the president urged Iowans to register to vote. "This is GottaRegister.com," President Barack Obama said at a rally at Living History Farms on Sept... read more