Interview with Jack McNicol

By Simon Cook

Kristine and I have worked with the team at Aligent Consulting from the start of our journey at Encode Talent.

Their employees are smart, enthusiastic and customer-centric – which is no surprise given the leadership team’s strong ‘people first’ ethic.

I'd heard good things about Jack but this was actually the first time we had met – it was great to get to know him!

On Thursday 15 October 2020, Jack will be presenting at the FrontendADL October (Virtual) Lightning Talks.

His talk will introduce Snowpack - and I'm confident his presentation will be really well received.

Hi Jack - can you tell the FrontendADL community a bit about yourself?

My name is Jack McNicol, I’m currently working as a Technical Analyst at Aligent Consulting where we work on large Ecommerce builds. Working as an Analyst is a new role for me this year and has come about due to a mix of both my consulting and dev work. Over the past 15 years I’ve done full stack web development, across a range of languages, PHP, Ruby, Javascript. 

At home I’m a Dad of 4 girls and spend the majority of my time running them between Basketbal, Ballet, Netball and Football. And in the few spare moments I have for myself I love reading manga, and enjoy running while listening to my extensive podcast list.

What is the title of your talk?

SnowPack. - Short and to the point. 

What is it about?

Snowpack is part of the new generation of JS tooling looking to improve the javascript development process in which we seems to compile to and from legacy and modern javascript builds. 

Who do you recommend logs onto this talk?

If you enjoy building SPA/PWAs, are tired of slow and complicated webpack dev builds, are always on the lookout for new shiny things, then come along and BYO javascript framework.  

How would your family describe what you do for work?

My girls would describe me as a website builder to direct inquiries. Day to day in their lives I’m the Fixer of WI-FI and Obseser of strong passwords. One small victory in my life is having my 9 year old on LassPass. 

What impact has COVID19 had on your working life?

Not a huge amount. 90% of our clients at work are on the east coast so we were using zoom before then. I did enjoy the change in pase that it brought during Iso. No commute meant I could fit in a morning run up the hill near our place overlooking the city. And due to the closure of kids sport I didn’t spend every other moment driving from place to place or coding from the ballet studio. 

What changes that have come from COVID do you intend on 'holding onto' after we return to normal?

I would say the value of regularly connecting up with friends and family even if remotely, and taking time out more regularly from the weekly grind to step back and evaluate what are we doing this for.

If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing to improve the life of software developers, what would it be?

JS tooling that just worked, first time, every time - no matter the project setup.

Can you describe the Adelaide tech scene in 5 words or less?

Slim Chickens. 

Please explain?

We have a talent gap in Adelaide. I don’t mean knowledge gap, but in terms of both finding talent to fill jobs in. While there are obvious opportunity differences between Adelaide and the East coast, tech jobs in Adelaide from what I’ve seen consists of passing devs around from one agency to another. At Aligent we have had to continually expand our job hiring horizons in bringing in talent from OS to grow our team and fill the requirement of growth that our industry has kept pushing. 

I think COVID has further created challenges for businesses, as workplaces loosen the reigns of physical offices and look to hire around the world, it reduces the local available talent pools.

While for developers themselves it has opened up further opportunities and gives them a greater flexibility, I believe it's important to give back to the local tech scene through meetups like the Frontend ADL or Women in Tech and to share the knowledge that may come from teams around the globe. 

What is one question I should have asked to make this an even more interesting interview?

A movie/postcast/album you have seen/listened to recently that you would recommend.

And how would you have answered this?

The podcast “Akimbo” by Seth Godin - is always on point with Seths poignant analysis of all parts of marketing and business. On the streaming video side, I would recommend the “Patriot” on Amazon Prime which is a strange mix of a weird, atmospheric spy caper and comedy. Worth the time investment into its 2 series.

Thanks Jack, I really appreciate it.

Sign up for this free event - hosted virtually on Thursday 15 October 2020 - now at bit.ly/frontendADL

This event is proudly sponsored by the team at Encode Talent