Meet Chris Zichko: A developer with a knack for automation

Chris Zichko is a Full Stack Developer at OpenHouse Home Insurance residing near Orlando, Florida. After a successful career in the Marine Corps, he decided to pivot and follow his budding interest in building technology. Chris’s story is a testament to how taking a leap and chasing your passion can lead to something wonderful down the road.

Q: How did you first get into coding?

I learned to code in August of 2020 when I started playing video games such as Old School RuneScape and Call of Duty. I wanted to figure out how to automate my mouse and keyboard, and I was successful! It felt amazing. After that, I wanted to take on a bigger challenge, so I bought a robot arm. When I got the arm, I tried to do certain tests around the house for myself, such as automating my laundry room. 

I became more serious about learning to code so I took Free Code Camp’s Scientific Computing Certification with Python. After I completed that course it just kept snowballing for me. I took a Full Stack boot camp from the University of Central Florida. I enjoyed it a lot. There were many sleepless nights because I was working a full-time job and doing the boot camp, but it was worth it. The boot camp specialized in the MERN stack. It covered the different aspects of MongoDB, ExpressJS, ReactJS, and NodeJS. 

I’ve been thinking about doing another boot camp, potentially in data analysis. I’m currently working on some courses for data analysis to see if a boot camp would be the right fit for me.

Q: Could you tell me more about automating the robot arm? How did you do that?

Q: Are you still interested in automating physical objects?

Yes, I’m lazy so I like automating as much as possible. I have also tried to automate some games as a way to learn more about automation. I did this by buying some games, and instead of doing all the work for Machine Learning, I made a listener that listens to everything I do on the game. The listener also takes screenshots of everywhere I click and collects all the RGB values. That way I don’t have to go through and collect all the images myself. Eventually, if I have done everything correctly, it will try to play the game in the most efficient way possible. In a sense, it is like a digital clone, but I haven’t gotten all the way there yet. I am still in the process of doing all the data processing – I have four gigabytes so far.

Q: What is your educational background?

In addition to the Scientific Computing Certificate I already mentioned, I also have a full stack web development certification specializing in MERN stack, which is MongoDB, Express.js, React.js, and Node.js. A lot of this has been self-taught and through certifications and courses from Educative or Udemy.

Q: What do you find works best for you when self-learning?

Since a lot of these concepts are very challenging, I find it helpful to channel my learning into an activity. For example, I used games or the robot arm because those gave me an avenue I enjoyed to help learn these larger concepts. Experimenting with video games allowed me to learn how to use Machine Learning to create a bot.

My long-term goal is to learn more about deep reinforcement Machine Learning.

Q: What is something you are working towards?

This somewhat goes back to my childhood. I remember as a kid wanting to travel to the moon. Right now, that doesn’t seem like it relates to coding, but it eventually connects back. 

As a kid, I would follow all the spatial programs and get so excited to go myself one day. But as I saw so many programs get canceled, I lost a lot of motivation. Later in life, when I learned how to automate my mouse and keyboard, I started digging more into what was actually possible with coding. I realized I could use code to build out my thoughts digitally to manipulate objects and help me achieve certain tasks. We could even advance to controlling robots on the moon. What are the capabilities and limits of coding? I believe that if I can achieve that dream, technology can be applied to anything else.

Q: How did you decide that you wanted to pursue coding as a career?

As I mentioned earlier, I have always wanted to go to the moon ever since I was a kid. Even today I hold onto that goal and I'm working towards it. I know that Full Stack development doesn’t seem like a step towards that goal, but it has actually helped me quite a bit to understand APIs and data flows. I am at the point where I can move closer toward Machine Learning, data analysis, and data science. 

Once I am more confident in these spaces, I want to eventually combine robotics with this knowledge and create an avatar. This route into space would be so much safer and affordable. This childhood dream is what got me initially interested in coding.

Q: What is your current role?

I’m a Full Stack Cloud Developer at OpenHouse Home Insurance. It’s the best place I’ve ever worked.

Q: What helped you get your first full time role as a Full Stack developer?

Before landing this full-time role, I was taking contract jobs off of Fiverr. This process helped me learn a lot from my mistakes. For example, I had one client who wanted to convert his website to the MERN stack, which I specialized in. However, at the time, I didn’t know enough about SEO and I basically ruined his SEO through the process. I felt terrible and ended up working on the project for much longer than I intended trying to fix this. The project was only supposed to take about 2-3 weeks; I ended up working on it for 3 months. 

Even though this was a painful mistake at the time, it actually helped me learn more about SEO through the process of trying to fix my mistake. The learning curve takes a long time.

Q: What helped you eventually land a full time role?  

I had done a lot of interviews but wasn’t having much luck. Many interviewers would tell me that I was too honest in my interviews. I think I struggled with connecting with my interviewers. However, when I interviewed for my current role, I interviewed with the CTO and we really connected well. It was so intimidating to walk into a big office and meet with the CTO. But in our conversation, we found that we were both really into data. So we hit it off talking about data science and it felt really easy to talk with him. 

In past interviews, if an interviewer asked me a question and I said I didn’t know the answer, they always ended the interview right there. But for my current role, the CTO would stop and explain it to me. 

Outside of this, growing my portfolio through contract work was a major asset. It was a growing pain at the time, but in the long run, it helped me learn the most.

Q: How have you continued your learning while employed?

For me, it's about asking the right questions. My company provides a lot of learning opportunities for me and, on top of that, I work with a lot of people who have more experience. It can be intimidating to be surrounded by people with more education than you, but I see this as an opportunity to learn from them.  

Sometimes I feel overshadowed by my coworkers because I don’t have a Masters's degree or Ph.D. I think it's amazing they have accomplished that because it isn't easy. Working with them lets me know where I need to improve. At times it feels like I have to sprint as fast as possible to keep up with them, but they are very helpful.

I ask a lot of questions, which I’m sure can be overbearing, but it's how I learn best. My approach to questioning is to never question someone else’s logic. Instead, I try to learn if someone else’s logic is better than mine and if I can learn from it. If their logic is not better than mine, I want to help them. I think we have a very healthy balance of that at my company, we try to boost each other up.

Q: What aspects of Full Stack development do you work with specifically in your role? 

I work extensively with APIs and sending data to and from services that we use. I have helped automate a lot of our processes. AWS is the most specific place where I work. Particularly with lambda functions and S3 buckets. That is something I think anybody trying to learn to code could access.

Q: Do you enjoy technical writing? What brought you to Educative Answers?

Yes and no. 

After I finished my computing certification with Python, I got in contact with someone at Educative who asked if I would like to write some guides on Python. I wrote one article about statistics and then I wrote several about Kivy for Python, which is basically the front-end framework for apps I was working with at that time. 

Around this time I was having dinner with some friends and I asked them if there was anything I could build for them. One of my friends is the owner of a music academy and he asked if I could build him a piano chord progression. Coincidentally, I was asked to write on Educative Answers shortly after that which led to me writing about the concepts I used to build this app for my friend. I think both of these experiences, writing on Educative Answers and building an app for my friend, helped me land my current position. 

I had never really been good at writing or speaking, but this experience helped me to gain a deeper understanding of the concepts I was learning. It was a fun new way to write something and learn in the process.

Q: Do you have any advice you would give to someone who is trying to get into coding?

Always ask questions. If you are always asking questions, then you are always trying to learn. By doing this you will see different routes and perspectives. You might even find a better path that you didn’t see before. 

Another point I would share with beginners is to not limit yourself to one particular language or one job. If you learn one, the rest are much easier to learn. 

I would also recommend using ChatGPT to help answer your questions. I know some people are on the fence about it, but it's a tool just like Google or StackOverflow and it can help break down the logic behind our questions. 

Lastly, if you are struggling to find a job right now, don’t give up. The right role will come; I went through hundreds of interviews and put myself out there, which is really hard for me. But eventually, I found the right fit.

Learn how to install the Kivy module in Python with Chris!#

If you would like to read Chris Zichko's entire Answer, you can read it here.

Chris's technical writing journey started right here on Educative Answers! If you are looking to upskill, technical writing is a great way to craft expert communication skills.

If this sounds like you, come write on Educative Answers.