Check out your Company Bowl for anonymous work chats.
Wednesday evening, GDG Salt Lake came onsite for another great meetup. We enjoyed pizza from The Pie and listened to a fantastic presentation by Carlos Bos, Director of Software Engineering at 1-800 Contacts. During his presentation on how to successfully navigate one’s career, Carlo explored myths around promotions, discussed potential career stallers, and emphasized the importance of being able to receive feedback. He also touched on the value of continual learning and understanding one’s own brand. We are excited to share that for 2020, 1-800 Contacts will continue to host GDG Salt Lake each month. We are thrilled to make our facility available and support the amazing networking and discussions that occur within these groups. Interested in attending a future meetup? We invite you to reach out to Trevyn Mace, one of our senior ecommerce engineers who is actively involved with this group, or reach out to GDG Salt Lake directly. #lifeat1800contacts #technology
Our other CTAC-U instructor this quarter is Elizabeth Leach, Software Engineer II and front end developer extraordinaire. When asked why she’s passionate about learning and development, she shared, “I think it’s important for people to learn . . . keeping your brain healthy is done through learning, and it’s important to me to not be stagnant. Learning is the antithesis of stuck, and it’s the best way out of any awful situation. To learn is to heal, to fix, to grow, to become better. It doesn’t have to be tech, but it’s an easy industry to always learn something new in. I am happy to help others learn because it’s important for people to have the opportunity to be challenged, and often it’s easier to learn and step up to the challenge if there is someone there saying “Hey, I’ll help!” The world is a beautiful place, and tech makes it even cooler—so why not learn what we can and help others learn what they can." #lifeat1800contacts #womenintechnology
We are excited to share that we are acquiring 6over6 Vision, a highly innovative, vision technology business. For full details, we invite you to check out this article!
We’re honored to be among the 2019 Best Companies to Work For as selected by Utah Magazine. We want to thank our associates for helping us win—we couldn’t have done so without their input and participation! We’ve been happily nurturing a culture that values hard work, copious cereal consumption, and epic summer parties for 25 years. One of our associates shared: “The culture of 1-800 Contacts is a reason why I returned to work for this company after a short hiatus. They live values of taking care of their internal and external customers and operate with extreme integrity.” We’re thrilled to have won this award 10 times now, and look forward to what 2020 holds. #lifeat1800contacts #bestcompaniestoworkfor2019 #greatplacestowork
This quarter, we have two fantastic instructors leading the efforts of our CTAC-U development program. Yessenia Figueroa, one of our senior ecommerce software engineers, is currently teaching our object oriented programming C# course, focusing on backend services development. A member of the mobile app backend team, she is a humble leader that is passionate about her craft. When asked how she became interested in technology as a career, she shared: “Since I was a child I've always been interested in IT and technology. It was a dream of mine to become a game developer, but at home, there weren't the means to even buy a computer. For some time, I dabbled in music but eventually, I did the full circle back to computers and programming. I love creative ways of solving problems. It is not about the code itself; it is about fulfilling a need and finding a solution for it. My passion for learning and development is what keeps me current. It is also fun to learn new things and implement new ways of coding.” #womenintechnology
Our most recent Associate Development Program participants celebrated their graduation by hitting a few balls at Topgolf. Shout-out to these individuals for their hard work and contributions to the organization. Peng Se Lim, People Operations Partner, People Department, shared the following regarding this tremendous group: “The opportunity to work with developing and getting to know our fellow associates and teammates is one of the highlights of this past month. We were able to see a group of individuals with drive, potential, and performance grow both professionally and personally. It’s always impressive to see the type of individuals that work at 1-800 Contacts but also the amount of learning and development that occurs as well on a day-to-day basis. Great job to our most recent graduates of our Associate Development program.” #lifeat1800contacts #learninganddevelopment
We recently launched CTAC-U (think Contacts University), an in-house learning environment where associates can expand their skill set and knowledge. Kirk Graves, Technology Manager, welcomed the challenge to head this program and help us explore potential IT talent within our own walls. Kirk shared his thoughts on his goals for this program. “CTAC-U was created out of a need to meet three distinct goals: improve the IT candidate pool, live up to the We Champion You value, and create a more diverse work environment. Many of the best technology companies in the world are showing that great ideas come from highly diverse teams. We believe that as we diversify our IT teams, we create an environment that is more open to new ideas, more adaptive to change, and more able to respond to the needs of our customers.” #lifeat1800contacts #technology
Last month the UX Club at UVU came onsite to our Draper campus. After a tour of the building and lunch at our 20/20 Grille, our design team led them through a short design challenge with our mobile app. The session was incredibly valuable, and it was so great getting to collaborate with these talented individuals! #uxdesign #uvu
With the month drawing to an end, we reflect back on this quarter’s Live for the Impossible event with pride. Being able to work for a company that is willing to dedicate two full days each quarter to self-directed innovation is pretty amazing. Investing in our people and their passions continues to be an integral part of our culture and DNA. There were over a dozen associate-driven ideas this quarter, and it was awesome seeing what they were able to achieve. We want to thank all of our associates that participated and poured their hearts into their projects. A special shout-out to our winners, Kirk Graves (Most Impactful to the Business), Tyler Winzenried and Jenny Walsh (Most Creative), and Mike Curtis (Best Presentation). From our tech-focused efforts to our beautiful, new mural, we’d say this round was another success! #1800contacts #innovation #livefortheimpossible
We’re thrilled to see Draper, UT, home to 1-800 Contacts headquarters, ranked as the 6th best place to live in America. Having our headquarters in Draper for more than 20 years, we’d have to agree. From the great people in our community to the beautiful mountains surrounding us, it continues to be a great place to work and live. Thanks, Shaina Mishkin, for the shout-out in the article! #bestplacestolive2019 #money #1800contacts
