John
Software Development Manager, Evanston Office
Education
PURDUE UNIVERSITY
B.S. in Computer Science, 1998
Activities at Purdue: Work, work, work. During my Purdue experience, if I wasn’t fabricating laboratory equipment for the Physics 152 Lab, I was developing circuit boards and programming small field computers for the Department of Entomology.
Memories of Purdue: There is no shortage of brilliance at Purdue. I thoroughly enjoyed learning from the best. Some of my fondest memories include: winning Professor Hambruch's data mining contest, Professor Comer's digital pointer, and Gustavo Rodriguez-Rivera's hallmark phrase, '... like magic ...'.
Hometown
Anderson, IN
ZS Career Path
Software Developer, 1999
Software Developer Consultant, 2001
Manager, 2007
On the work
“My favorite project is our incentive compensation administration tool, and I lead its six-member development team. It’s my favorite project because it is so challenging. It uses myriad technologies including Java, C, PLSQL, Visual Basic, Unix, and Oracle. It has a growing user base that includes clients as well as internal project teams, and its footprint across the incentive compensation practice area is constantly growing.”
On ZS values
Treat People Right: “People will drop whatever they are doing and help you out. That is the culture at ZS. And even though you have to stay an extra hour because of the hour you helped someone out, that’s just what you do here. I’ve found that there is a genuine concern people share for helping others.”
On life outside work
“My daughter takes up most of my time outside of work. She’s just now at the age where it is worth going to museums with her, and we just took her to the aquarium last week. My wife and I enjoy watching movies together even though our preferred genres are stereotypical (she likes love stories and I like action movies).”
On the Evanston office
“The restaurants in Evanston are top-notch. Nearby in Chicago, there are world-class museums—The Field Museum, the Shedd Aquarium, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Science and Industry Museum. And being from Indiana where we have no professional baseball team, it’s a great city to pull for the Cubs and White Sox. People are nice for such a big city, both in Chicago and Evanston, and especially in the Evanston office, people are truly friendly and helpful.”