About Me

Hi!

I'm Sana! I'm an overeducated polyglot ex-Google intern based in Auckland, New Zealand. Professionally, I'm an experienced programming language polyglot full stack developer. In my day to day, I write golang, C#, and bits of python and javascript. I wouldn't mind learning Ruby though. Or Rust. Or Node, but properly...

My focus is on working on APIs and integrations and I spend a lot of time thinking of API mashups - my best so far has been a Zapier zap which fires whenever Kanye West tweets and snail mail posts you the tweet in a handwritten card.

I like the cloud and handling infrastructure. At one point, I had containers deployed to AWS EC2, Google Cloud Kubernetes Engine, and Azure Kubernetes Service simultaneously.

I feel professional pride in being able shepherd my code from my editor into production and ensuring it works. To me this means collaborating with QAs, designers, product managers, writing test coverage, creating deployment pipelines, creating infrastructure, using monitoring and setting up alerts, working with customer support, staying on top of bug fixes, keeping track of NPS feedback and usage metrics.

I enjoy information security. For starters, they have the best conferences. I feel a responsibility towards users to keep their data safe, even if it's on someone else's website. I've accidentally fallen into bug bounty hunting because of that.

I care a lot about making work better for those around me. In the past, this has looked like creating and maintaining on-boarding documentation, running an intern programme, working on diversity and inclusion initiatives, naming the company mascot...

I take an academic approach to culture - both national level cultures in the form of cross-cultural psychology, and company cultures in the form of organisational psychology. I pay things forward by doing my best to mentor new developers (particularly from underrepresented and/or marginalised groups) and volunteering for outreach events. When advancing my own career, I try to remember to send the elevator back down for others.

I took the scenic route to becoming a developer. That's what the tag sana's past lives is about. I have a BA in English literature with a minor in history, a Graduate Diploma (kinda like an Associate's) in Psychology, and a BSc in Computer Science. I was 2 courses away from a double major in Chemistry for my science degree, but I never want to touch third year inorganic chemistry again. I won a television quiz show once, which qualifies me as a D-list New Zealand celebrity.

My existence elsewhere in the web

My Face

Popular Posts