Name: Nicholas La Roux Class Year: 2015 College Degree: Bachelor of Science in Information Technology, with a minor in Information Systems Current Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada What was your first job out of college, and what is your current job? My first and only job since college has been working as a Software Developer at Shopify in Ottawa, Canada. What do you miss most about Marist (or college in general)? I miss the beautiful campus, the massive amount of free time, and seeing my friends every day. Tell us a little about your current job and how Marist prepared you for it. My current job consists of primarily programming in a web development environment. I work on the Home team at Shopify, which manages the screen you see when you first login to your Shopify admin. That screen has a lot of info, cards, and so on on it. The point I’m trying to make here is the team I work on manages a very complex, ever-changing area of Shopify, and I believe Marist helped me best by preparing me to multitask and giving me the skills to manage complex, interpersonal situations. What is your favorite part of your job now? My favorite part is knowing that when I create something at Shopify, it has the potential of being seen by over 377,500 merchants, possibly many more if they have multiple employees. The reach my job affords me makes me feel like I can make a real impact on the world and people’s lives. What’s the best part about life after college? The worst? The best part about post-college life is coming home after work and not having any nagging responsibilities, i.e. homework. It’s nice to not almost always have something you should be doing/working on. The worst part about post-college life is probably the seclusion. Seldom have I had a time where I see more than a couple of my best friends for multiple days in a row. When I lived at Marist, I housed (senior year) with 7 of my best friends and had more coming over daily as well. I believe that for the most part, that amount of social time is simply unheard of post-college. What’s one thing you wish someone had told you about postgrad life? What’s something surprising? This is going to sounds ridiculously old of me I guess but I ran into this issue when I first graduated. You’re going to be, in many situations, making more money than you’ve ever made before. Open a savings account and/or contribute to your 401k (or RRSP if you’re in Canada like me) as soon as possible. It’s very easy to fall into having one big, unmanageable checking account slush fund where money just disappears. Surprising? Canada is a lot warmer than I expected, during the brief summer period, that is. Do you have anything you’d like to tell current seniors as they prepare to graduate? I’d like to think I stuck to my guns and held out for a job that I thought I would actually enjoy. I had many opportunities to simply work IT at a financial firm and/or some corporate style company but I didn’t settle and instead, moved to Canada for Shopify in July of 2015. One of the best decisions of my life. So, I’d say, yeah, maybe take a small job in the meantime if you’re strapped for cash or hell, take the corporate job, but always be looking for the job that you think you’ll be truly happy with. I thought it was impossible but I’m actually happy to go to work every day. It’s truly amazing. What’s your dream job? Still working at Shopify but in Japan or, if that’s not possible, Google in Tokyo, Japan.
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