Meet Our People: Marcelo
How did you enter this career?
Back in 1995, I was an Electrical Engineer Student and had my first contact with the internet at the university lab. I’m a curious person, so I started to wonder how these “websites” are made and a couple weeks later I built my first GeoCities hosted website using a notepad app.
After a few months researching, studying and learning by myself, I dropped out of school and got my first job as a Webmaster (the 90’s definition for Web Developer) building HTML, Flash and ASP websites (I know, but it was the 90’s remember?) for a major educational company in Fortaleza, my hometown in Brazil.
Where else have you worked?
After having worked for major companies developing my career for more than 15 years, I decided to move to Canada and start over again. I got my first job here in a digital agency. A few months later I had the opportunity to work in a digital media company and one year later I was invited to work at Carleton.
Fun fact: I worked for 2 years, on my first ever job, interviewing people for a population census when I was 19 years old.
What are some of the technologies you have used along the way?
As a web dinosaur, I started to build websites before the age of dynamic pages using pure HTML/CSS. I was there in the dark ages of web development building entire Flash websites.
After these shameful times, I got redemption by learning ASP and built a custom CMS for the company I was working for. WordPress came into the game, ruled the internet and I bet all my coins on PHP.
Being a web developer before the 2000’s means you can build a website from scratch, including the design. PhotoShop, Sketch, Figma and Adobe XD are included in my skillset as well.
A few years ago, I decided to focus on the front-end and improved my JavaScript, React, HTML5, CSS3, SASS and modern web development (NPM, webpack, Docker, etc.) skills.
What are the best things about your job?
Definitely, the full environment: The team is awesome. Really. I’m glad to work with talented, skilled, fun, friendly and super helpful people.
Working in a university/academic mindset gives me the opportunity to research, learn new things and, above all, create products as best as possible.
Do you have some exciting projects you are working on right now?
At Carleton I’m working at the new CU Theme for WordPress websites creating Gutenberg Blocks with React. I’m always coding in my free time, so I’m working in an exciting Headless WordPress project using React and NextJS for a client.
What music are you listening at the moment?
I’m a metalhead. I love heavy metal and I’m in a progressive vibe. The two main bands on my playlist right now are Jack the Jocker (from Fortaleza) and Protest The Hero (Michael’s band).
What are you reading at the moment?
Tons of React documentation.
What do you do outside of work to amuse yourself?
Watch movies and tv series with my wife, play video games online with my Brazilian friends, go for bike rides and play basketball.
Fun fact: I’m from Brazil but I really love winter sports – ice skating, skiing, snowboarding, all of them!
What exciting plans do you have coming up in the next year?
We are moving to a house for the first time and I’m pretty sure that will be a huge adventure. I can’t wait to start doing all the fun stuff like gardening and snow shovelling.