Smartronix

August 2015 - November 2019

Smartronix was a government contractor job. There isn’t a whole lot Matthew can talk about unless the focus is one very hand-wavy work experience.

In this role Matthew supported ETIRMS, a very old Navy project that acts as a front-end to a very large and dynamic database used by many other projects. ETIRMS was a part of the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division (NAWC-WD), Point Mugu, CA. Another work task was conversion of older applications into micro-services.

Matthew performed software engineering for supporting various Navy aircraft, weapons systems, and other existing or newly developed applications and tools. He was the goto-guy for many solutions.

Matthew’s work including adding critical classified code into JMPS (Joint Mission Planning System) typically used on a pilot’s laptop for mission planning. Matthew also helped build a complex micro-service architecture, that would be used on a main battle ship, including orchestration, messaging, logging, monitoring, and the utilization of Docker in both Linux and Windows environments. He also insisted, despite push back, that there should be unit testing, integration testing, and end-to-end testing.

Eventually Matthew was tasked with a more complicated effort of developing a kafka implementation that would synchronize with a very large dynamic database. The purpose of using Kafka was for faster communication between databases and and as an Event-Sourcing repository. His tasks included fully understanding micro-services architecture, documenting important design patterns & standards, orchestration, messaging, logging, monitoring, utilization of Docker in both Linux and Windows environments, and planning for testing via unit-testing, integration testing, and end-to-end testing. Implementation including experimenting with many databases, C# framework and core, Java, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JSON, REACT, and even making COM work in a docker container.

Other tasks included converting a very large VB6 application to C#. He also helped with designing and integrating new external interfaces supporting multiple clients, vendors and platforms into JMPS and the micro-services.

All of these projects used C#, .Net Framework, .Net Core, ASP.NET, SQL, Docker, Node.JS, NGINX, MySQL, Postgres, VB6, C/C++, Java, and ADA95. Other applications used included Microsoft Word, Access, Excel, PowerPoint, Power BI, Visual Studio, Unity3D HoloLens, SharePoint, Rational Rose, ClearCase, and Great Migrations.

Pros (Smartronics):

• Matthew felt good believing he was helping those who served the country
• Smartronix was a very friendly employer who liked to tap into contractor employees for other work on the side
• There were more learning opportunities like skill courses in problem-solving, communication, etc.
• Nice supportive management

Pros (ETIRMS):

• Matthew was happy to see that really old, often 10+ years, applications were being improved
• Bringing in usb drives or paper were not allowed making solving complex problems without the internet really fun
• ETERMS willingness to accept complex ideas like heat-mapping, parallel processing, SOLID OOP, Micro-Services, Kafka, and Agile
• There were a variety of co-workers that were fun and engaging to work with
• With effort, management would allow training courses in new programming skills
• New opportunities to demonstrate modern technology that could one day, maybe a few years out, be utilized

Cons (Smartronix):

• Health and retirement benefits were not very good

Cons (ETIRMS):

• Hardware was very difficult to use at optimal performance
• New overly aggressive managers started appearing and kept being forced to leave
• Frequent damage to personal property (car, computer equipment, books, etc.) while on base
• People were sometimes verbally and / or physically violent making this toxic environment