Saying Goodbye to USAA, For Now 22 Feb 2022

After almost five formative years, I’m moving on from my position as a front-end developer at USAA. As I leave, I want to highlight what I did, learned and enjoyed during my time there.

Member Home is the internal name for the account dashboard web application at USAA.

What I Did

USAA gave me opportunities to build robust web applications. I’m most proud of the work my team and I put into Member Home. It’s not often you get the opportunity to build a highly trafficked web experience, especially out of college. There was so much on the line: the information Member Home displays is extremely important to people. We also built interactive experiences for product acquisition flows and rich customization features, like drag and drop with groups and subgroups.

My teams and managers encouraged me to become the accessibility and performance advocate I am today. Through them, I helped implement cutting edge performance enhancements in Member Home. Compared to the previous experience, we required 80% less resources in the member’s browser. I worked hand-in-hand with USAA’s world-class accessibility team to ensure we weren’t simply passing automated tests, but building fully featured and understandable experiences for users of all abilities.

What I Learned

I learned how to effectively collaborate across teams. Member Home developers and designers received accolades for our working relationship. We worked together in ways seldom seen at USAA at the time. The front-end and back-end teams were in constant communication as we built both sides of Member Home. It’s not often you get to change the data contract with your backend team as you’re slowly rolling out and building new features.

Success at USAA hinges on how well you foster relationships. It’s impossible to know how everything works at USAA. You have to lean on shared knowledge and good repertoire to build something right the first time. It’s a skill I can take anywhere and a culture I hope to see at other companies.

I had many opportunities to present ideas and learn how to be a mentor. As a young engineer, I was met with respect and compassion. I tossed around a lot of silly ideas early on in my career, but was never shunned. I was always encouraged to speak up and question how we do things. I had successes and I made mistakes. Overall I learned how to be a better communicator and someone who considers a problem as whole before rushing to fix it.

What I Enjoyed

I enjoyed the freedom I was afforded to innovate and refactor. Dedicated innovation sprints, hackathon competitions and supportive scrum managers and stake holders were key in my success. Again, when I spoke up about building something new or redoing a large feature, I was heard. I learned countless valuable lessons when I took on these types of efforts. I’m so grateful for those opportunities.

Where I’m Going

My final day is February 28th and I start my new role March 7th. I will be a Web Performance Engineer at REI. This next opportunity is the perfect intersection of everything important to me right now. I get to pursue my passion for web performance and work for a company that fuels my obsession with cycling, hiking and camping. The stars aligned and I have to say goodbye, for now.