Today we’d like to introduce you to Dan Belling.
Dan, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Though my formal secondary education was in the life sciences (B.S. Chemistry University of Minnesota class of 2012), I’ve always been fascinated with computers and knew I wanted to work professionally with the software on some level. I had the opportunity to dive into software development in UnitedHealth Group’s Innovation Garage skunkworks group in 2015. When I found my way to ed-tech, I knew this was an opportunity area for me in particular. I was very fortunate to work with some incredibly gifted individuals during my time with Optum – and I would say the relationships I made at this stage in my career set the stage for what was to come. Hiring and training talent in technology continues to be a challenging undertaking, and I’ve personally felt that continued investment in this space will help fuel tomorrow’s future efforts of entrepreneurial and engineering leaders.
Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
There’s an unattributed quote I’ve seen routinely crop up in my circles “software is easy, people are hard.” I’d say this resonates with my professional experience thus far. Sure, there have been technical challenges – like the initial platform team of 5 at Flipgrid trying to meet demands of scale for the application during the surge in remote learning in the early stages of the pandemic. Still, the varied personal dynamics of the teams I’ve been on may have been the toughest hurdle to overcome. Sometimes a team “just works,” there is alignment on coding conventions, clear direction from product leadership on deliverables, and everyday code hits production like clockwork. But that is not always the case, and cat herding can be difficult without appropriate guardrails. Is the company remote? If so, do team members feel engaged/empowered in the delivery cycle? If not, why? How does a manager prevent boredom and burnout? Do personal convictions get in the way during the code review process? At what point does “good enough” outweigh “perfection” for mission-critical code and bug fixes?
These are all subjective questions that no engineering leader can didactically convey to a team – they need consensus or at least buy-in from individual contributors.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’ve been writing software professionally in the Twin Cities area for about 7 years now – mostly as a generalist. I’ve worked across much of the stack – frontend, backend, cloud infrastructure, and data analytics – primarily in Ruby, Rails, and Javascript in the healthcare, financial, and education sectors. I’d be hard-pressed to point to one project I am most proud of. Still, any opportunity I’ve had to work on professional development programs has always felt the most fulfilling. Most recently, with a great group of early-stage engineers and designers on an assignment with the Science Museum of Minnesota through a DeeD grant from the state.
How would we have described you growing up if we knew you were growing up?
Unlike Peter Pan, I don’t feel like I’ve grown up quite yet – nor do I want to. I still eat sugared cereal for breakfast, play too many video games, and hate spending my allowance (read: income) on bills.
On a more serious note – I was an only child that loved technology and math class. I spent my younger days building robots and flying rockets with my dad, and I had a very small close group of friends I still keep in touch with. If something was unknown to me, I had to read up on everything I could get my hands on. In short, I was a soft-spoken, introverted nerd that didn’t take himself too seriously.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.dbelling.cloud
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danbelling/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/dan__irl__
