COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS

For my Community Connections Project, I chose to interview my dad’s friend Mike Mazurek because I want to pursue programming as a profession. I think that Mike would be a great role model for me because he is a Sr Developer at his own company and he formerly work as a Developer at Electronic Arts (E.A.).w and a way for me to advance my learning of programming. Mike Mazurek is an inspiration to me because of how hard he has worked to create his own company so that he can do what he loves, programming. Mike showed me how hard it may be to start a business and to keep up with changes in the industry. I connect with Mike saying that he likes new challenges because I feel the same way. I feel this way because if you succeed it feels more fulfilling.

                     Interview

Mike Mazurek

1. What is your profession and title or role?

Sr. Developer

2. Can you explain your roles and responsibilities with your current position?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 (Picture of FIFA 15 Cover)

My main job is to take the requirements from stakeholders and develop those into something. For example: if a producer wants a video game, and he has the idea of how he wants it to work, I’ll take those requirements and program them to make the video game that’s being asked for.

3. Why are you passionate about your job or role?

I get to create so many new things, and I love the challenge that new projects bring.

4. What obstacles have you faced to get you where you are today?

Working for startups early on. It was a great experience but, you never know if the company will be around for long.

5. What advice would you pass on to someone interested in what you are doing?

Learn everything you can yourself. There are so many resources online to learn to program etc. I wouldn’t bother with post-secondary for this because of how fast the industry changes. By the time you graduate, what you’ve learned in school is not always relevant.

6. What parts of your job or role do you think makes it different or more interesting than other related professions?

I get to work with smart nerds all the time and we all like video games, so it’s fun to work with like-minded people.

7. What is something that you have worked hard on in your job or role that you are proud of?

When I was working at EA, we had a project where we had to optimize the code for FIFA 15 by 40%, and we did it. That optimization helps the game run faster every time a new game is released. There’s a lot of computing science that goes into this. Our team has multiple patents out for the way we achieved this.

   (Picture of Mike Mazurek with his baby)