About Permalink to "About" section

My name's Vladimir and on the Internet, I go by "allejo."

You may recognize me as a current/former coworker you liked, a mentor in a tech community, a shitposter on LinkedIn, or a contributor to open source projects. I'm a senior software engineer currently in higher ed doing frontend development at UC Merced; previously, I was at Stack Overflow.

I've been writing code since middle school and accidentally ended up with two decades of experience in software engineering. As many engineers in tech can probably relate, I would like to retire young to a remote village, dedicate myself to apiculture, have my own garden, my jailbroken Kindle, and a gaming PC with no network card so I can finally beat all my favorite childhood video games. If I want Wi-Fi, I'll go to the city and find myself a public library. I loathe technology and what it has become: the forced romanticization of everything in social media, the loss of critical thinking because of AI, the mass spread of misinformation, and the crime against humanity that is reality TV.

What I do like about technology is building developer tools like documentation builders, code generators, syntax highlighters, pipeline automation, and similar tooling. I also enjoy building and designing 3D worlds as a hobby, so I've enjoyed contributing to BZFlag, its community, and ecosystem over the past decade. I strongly believe that technology can be used for good, so I do pro bono or discounted work for nonprofits, open source projects, and small businesses. If you have a project that you think I could help with or simply would like to connect, reach out to me via email or LinkedIn.

I speak at conferences and workplaces on accessibility, mentoring, frontend development, and technical leadership. Teaching others is a passion of mine, and I enjoy helping others grow in their careers. I also enjoy writing about my experiences in software engineering, so I write articles on my blog.

Mentoring Permalink to "Mentoring" section

Since 2019, I have mentored 30+ junior and 10+ mid-level developers. With AI on the rise, I believe now more than ever we should focus on training junior and mid-level developers. Once the current generation of seniors retires or gets promoted, we won't have anyone in the industry who's been learning to fill those roles. I make it a goal always to mentor junior developers wherever I go.

• While at the City of Santa Monica, I helped run the Youth Tech Program where I taught high school students how to build websites.
• While at California State University, Northridge, I started my own student development team, which hired more than 10 students over my three-year tenure.
• While at Stack Overflow, I volunteered as a mentor at Techtonica—a bootcamp that helps women and LGBTQ+ people transition into tech careers.
• While at UC Merced, I started the department's first student development team and, in under 2 years, hired 8+ students, including 4 undocumented students, and worked with them through grants.

My next goal is to start lecturing at the college level in computer science, software engineering, web design, and HCI/accessibility.

Awards Permalink to "Awards" section

Early in my career, I was occasionally invited to participate in code-related competitions. Here are some notable mentions of competitions I've participated in and the work I did in them.