This Is The Project In My Career That I Am MOST Proud Of

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All right, folks. We're going to the experienced dev subreddit for this topic, but it's going to be my personal experience. So, um, this Reddit poster was asking, what is the project in your career that you're most proud of? And I thought this would be a fun one to talk through and kind of invite all of you, if you're, you know, if you're watching this on YouTube, um, if you don't mind, like share below in the comments, uh, what yours is. So, the framing of this from Reddit was essentially this person was saying, you know, on in interviews and stuff, it's often you'll hear a question that's something like, hey, like, you know, talk to us about your the project you're most proud of and like you walk through some of the details of that. And um usually these are things that like in an interview setting people are touching on because uh they've maybe it is their favorite, maybe it's not.

But there's sometimes a little bit of cherry-picking to be able to to talk about technical concepts or to be able to showcase, you know, uh leading projects, interactions, that kind of stuff. Um so all all great things. Um, and so I think it's important that, you know, if you have projects that you are really proud of, if you're able to dig into those, if you're able to leverage them in things like interviews to talk about, you know, um, what was sort of a creative on the technical side, like sort of uh, things that you're able to overcome that way. Uh, working across teams, leading, overcoming challenges, whatever it happens to be. If you have projects that you consider are your favorite, they become so natural to talk about because you're genuinely like, "Hell yeah, this is super cool that I did this." So, I encourage all of you, I hope that you are able to find projects like this in the work that you do.

Um, and for what it's worth, if you're like, "Well, man, like I don't know, I've been working for a bit and I feel like I don't have projects in my career that are like that." Hopefully, there's something on the side even like finding things that you feel like hell yeah about make it much easier to talk through. So, I want to talk through one that I'm most proud of in my career to date. I think um and this is from early on in my career. So, u I hope that doesn't make it sound like I haven't accomplished anything since then, but I I still think that I'm most proud of this one. I've talked about this in previous videos, but I'm going to bring us back to my digital forensic days uh at Magnet Forensics.

Um, so for a little bit of context, especially if you're new on the channel, uh, I work at Microsoft right now as a principal engineering manager of the Microsoft 365 routing plane, but prior to that, uh, I spent eight years at a digital forensics uh, startup company in Waterl, Ontario called Magnet Forensics. And so that company when it started was um founded by a police officer who was building digital forensic software to help uh you know his law enforcement peers and he partnered up with a former executive from uh from Blackberry. So um they founded this company together and so for digital forensics historically like this is going back now I mean like 14 years right it's been man it's been some time um but digital forensics traditionally was around like uh computers right so you'd have hard drives um and then one of the things that was becoming more and more interesting was like the ability to recover um information from hard drives that is like internet activity.

So the first product that was was launched was called internet evidence finder because it was um quite literally as the name suggests around finding internet evidence. So um this space was really interesting because uh I would say that there was a bit of like a I'm going to say like a monopoly in the space. There's a couple of really big um players in the industry. And so like if you were doing digital forensics, you used uh one or likely both of these tools. Um lots of overlap, right? It's really common in digital forensics that you end up having um multiple tools so that you can cross check things, but um two pretty big players that had essentially a monopoly on on digital forensics. So our whole thing was like well we have a different approach for how we do it and we believe that this is the better way.

Okay. So uh if you were to fast forward to these days now Magna Forensics I would argue is like the leader in digital forensics. Along the way we were saying cool like we have you know the ability to scan hard drives recover information including things like your uh you know different types of internet browser activity stuff like that. That's one of the things that, you know, we are very proud of that we could do. But what's this other thing that we do a lot of, right? Like we spend a lot of time on our phones. So like phone forensics is a really big uh opportunity. And interestingly, I would say especially at the time there was like I was mentioning two big players for computer forensics.

there was like essentially one one player in uh and I'm I'm exaggerating a little bit, but when I talk about like brands that were, you know, companies that were doing it that if you worked in the space, you would say like this is the company that does mobile forensics. That's just what people would go to. And we said, well, like we need an offering in our product suite that does mobile forensics. So, um, when I've told this story before, um, you know, my this next part of it, I don't I don't mean for it to sound like, uh, condescending or there's ill will or anything, but what had happened was that, uh, at the time, we said as a company, well, we're going to outsource some of this development, right? like we have a small team, we're a startup. Um like we're going to use some some budget to basically go outsource development of this to a team so they can focus on that.

And so this was a I think a team I think in California. I can't remember the exact details of it, but anyway, um long story short, this project was going off the rails. um there just wasn't progress so budget was burning and like nothing was actually getting delivered um and so this is this is the part that like I feel pretty proud of this but uh one of the uh sort of like original engineers who transitioned into a product manager role uh you know still to this day like one of my uh very best friends and so we were like this is this is a problem right like this work is outsourced. There's no progress being made. And we're like looking at sort of what if we were to take a step back like what is it that we need to build? We were like hold on like we think that we think that we can build this.

We at least think that we can prototype this, right? Like what what's stopping us from trying to prototype it at least? And so we put together a working prototype and um to be able to recover bite forbite evidence of uh of phones like starting with an Android phone. And so one of the the reasons why this is a pretty significant uh stepping stone is that in computer forensics the expectation of a lot of examiners and investigators is that they want a bite forbite copy of whatever device is being you know examined and that's like an expectation. I would say that over time that's relaxed a little bit because things like mobile phones uh are often literally on while you are uh making images of them. So like if the device is running, it's kind of uh it's almost kind of insane to say like a bit won't change on the device while while it's running and you're making a copy of it.

So anyway, that point aside, it was pretty significant to be able to say, "Look, we can get a bite for bite copy of the entire phone." So, we were able to put this together uh as a prototype. And I remember we were literally on a plane cuz I can't remember what we were traveling for for work, but we were on a plane sitting beside each other with a laptop out and we did our first mobile acquisition of an Android phone getting a full bite forbyte copy as the plane was taking off. Um, which is just like a a core memory that I have cuz it was pretty cool that we finally like had this little prototype working. And that was when we had enough like evidence to to basically go to to our VP and to the the CTO.

the CTO is one of the founders of the company and say like hey look like we think that we have a different strategy here that like we can kind of save uh you know save this project because it's it is off the rails and we think that we can build this inhouse and like we're confident saying that because we literally have you know a working prototype of of what we consider to be the most technically challenging part. Oh boy. Um, did we have a road ahead of us, but uh, what we ended up doing was building, uh, a UI around this, so it wasn't just a, you know, a super rough prototype, but still, you know, pretty early, but we had um, you know, a UI put on it. We pulled together a couple people to work on it. And really what was for me like a career progression kind of thing.

This is an example of like you know completely taking initiative in an area from like from the perspective of the business not just like you know I'm going to do something within the team to help uh shifting like a whole business strategy. Um was able to demonstrate something with a prototype. Uh was able to prove that we could take a prototype to production with uh you know very small nimble team. And then from there what I was able to do was like I ended up starting to manage uh that like specific team building that technology out. And so um I mean there's significantly more that follows because that became a team that I operated for uh for years to come. not only doing that specific product but um that team is also a team that I worked with. Uh we were able to pivot from that product to uh other completely different areas and sort of embody the same like approach in our development and prototyping to be able to take on different challenges.

Right. So cool like we proved it with mobile forensics. we have you know uh sort of this this process we follow like we work really well together to go research build prototypes and then kind of productize them so okay that's mobile forensics what about other types of forensics right so we were able to start looking at cloud forensics as well following the same pattern um we were able to build that out and then kind of hand it off to another team uh to to take and operate completely as like a you know uh fully functioning satellite team. But my point is that that was a huge stepping stone to be able to go take this idea and say like we think that we can do this, prove it, and then uh like repeat the process across a bunch of different areas. And there were prototypes that didn't work.

Of course, there are prototypes where we're like, "Hey, it does work, but like like sort of here's the cost of doing it. Does this make sense as a business? And maybe it does, maybe it doesn't make sense right now though. So like, hey, we have the the data. We can revisit this if we need to. Um, but I think I'm most proud of this project for a handful of reasons. One was like taking that initiative to be able to go do it. And, you know, we're going to we're just going to try and see what we can do. And it was super challenging, but we we said like it we know it's got to be possible. So, like it's uh one of those things where you don't just go to do people remember Stack Overflow before Chat GPT. You don't just go to Stack Overflow and get the answer.

Um maybe there's more stuff on Stack Overflow 14 years later. But, um or Chat GPT, I guess now, or Copilot or Claw, whatever you want to use. Um but yeah, we had to go figure this stuff out, and that was a a really cool thing for us to be able to do. Um, I think it was I'm really proud that I was able to kind of get a team pulled together on this and and demonstrate not only for for one sort of product, but like repeat the process across everything we touched. Um, and like I don't I would like I I think I should take some credit, but I don't take all the credit of course that like I had really amazing people on that team. I think that I I was really lucky that we pulled what I would say like the right people together that work well together, but we could repeat our our process across different areas.

Um, and then this is a little bit more like less of a I don't know, less of like an interview kind of thing, but um, something that I'm like really proud of and like sort of on a personal level is that um, there there was a reason I kind of hinted at the beginning of this uh, blabbering that there's kind of like a couple of, you know, uh, couple of big players in the the computer forensic space that had a bit of a monopoly and then like one player in uh in mobile forensics at the time. Um that one player in the mobile forensics space was like an entire company with um you know lots of lots of resources from a parent company. So they were like pretty pretty wellunded. They're pretty pretty established.

And so like we're a startup and so I I had the team of a few people who were directly competing with this entire company and we were getting reports from customers uh that you know this tool that we had put together that integrated with our bigger forensic suite um was in many cases like outperforming was easier to use better support outperforming uh this other really big player that had this monopoly. So, um, I share this because I think that that that spirit of like we're the underdog um was was like one of the most empowering things for me personally, but I also think that the people that I work directly with also were uh very motivated by that.

It's tricky because that can be a like a soul crushing kind of thing if you're like okay well you know like imagine you're like I want to I want to make sneakers and I'm like okay well have you heard of a company called Nike before and you're like oh I guess maybe I shouldn't make sneakers like you know my dream of making sneakers is crushed because like I mean there's Nike, there's Adidas, there's Reebok, there's a million companies that are huge. They make sneakers, right? But like why why should that stop you? Like do you do you have something unique and different that you're going to be proud of that you want to be able to, you know, have others get the joy and value out of. And like for us, I think that was like a really motivating thing to say like it doesn't matter if there's some other big player in this space.

We very confidently believe that we can do a better job and we will. And so that was, like I said, I think a an early all motivating factor and being able to kind of prove that out was um I don't know, like one of one of the most fulfilling things for me in my career. I think that was really cool. Um but yeah, I think having this mobile digital forensics product get built out was one of my most uh sort of proud achievements and projects. Um, on the technical side, like this is where it gets kind of weird to like this would be a trickier one to talk about in an interview because unless it was pretty specific to to digital forensics, but um because a lot of the technical achievements in it are uh they would be a lot more focused on on like explaining things in like Android operating systems and things like that.

So I think you know to to high level summarize it what was really cool was that um we had this process where we would go research things and if you think about a lot of software development like especially if you've heard of uh you know like agile software development or doing things in sprints or having story points or estimating things. We like we worked in a startup that was growing into a you know small to mid-size company and there was a lot of like you know ask and expectation around like can you estimate how long something's going to take and I get that right like there's marketing there's sales they need to plan their their launches and things like that um but we would have these scenarios where we're like look like this hasn't been done before so it's really difficult for us to give you an estim estimate on like how long it's going to take.

So we we did a I would say a really good job working with product management to be able to like to just have consistent communication, right? And what would happen a lot of the time is we'd go down this direction of like we're going to investigate this as a pathway to be able to recover more data or data from these specific phones. And um you know inevitably we months in we hit a roadblock and we're like like okay like you know uh if you think about this from like a development perspective that could be really demotivating right? Think about working on a project for for months and then being like oh I guess guess we can't ship this right some people watching this have probably worked on projects like that that that get cancelled or otherwise like don't get to ship. That's really disheartening. And so this is a pretty common thing, but um I think what was super cool about this was that it was never a waste, right?

So we would go research things and even if we couldn't get past some barrier, we couldn't productize it. It would all get documented. We'd have all the information and inevitably what would happen is the next thing or the thing after that when we would hit a roadblock, we'd go, "Wait a second. remember that thing that we worked on before and we learned like ABC like actually we could probably use part A and part C with this and that could unblock us here. And so we got to see repeatedly like all of these failed attempts from before were actually just like stepping stones for other uh technology that we would come to build. And um again like I I'm really proud of that that we were able to take what arguably could look like failures, right? Um and transform that into to really big wins later. I think from a a management perspective, I'm like that was a difficult thing to navigate with uh with the people on my team, right?

I wanted to make sure they knew that, you know, if they can't deliver something because of a technical thing that we can't solve, I don't want them to feel like they've failed, right? Like I need to let them know that all of the information and understanding that's collected along the way is absolutely forward progress. Yes, it's uh it's unfortunate if we can't take the the step to productize it. I get that. But like certainly not a failure, certainly not a waste. Sorry, this person's driving around me. Um, and so like for me earlier on in my managing like that was a tricky thing to navigate to like how do you how do you make sure that people like trust and believe that that you know um okay like you just worked on this for a few months and like what did you ship? Oh, you didn't ship anything.

It's not that's not like oh you're a failure. there's there's so much more value that you brought beyond just like landing the code. So, um I'm proud of that as well. But that was a really really exciting time in my career. Uh it was, you know, new stuff all the time. And in some of the previous videos that I've just been um putting out was talking about like, you know, getting comfortable with being uncomfortable, jumping into new things. I think this is a good example like how much did I know about mobile forensics before running a mobile forensics uh team zero. Um and then we were competing with the biggest company in the world doing it. So all that to say that is my favorite project and a reminder to you that you know um you can jump into some some challenging things that are a little bit unchartered for you.

And I think if you, you know, put the time and energy into it, you can do pretty incredible things. So, what is your project that you're most proud of? If you're comfortable sharing it in the comments, please do. I think it's uh it's fun for other people to see that kind of stuff and it's an opportunity for you to to brag a little bit. So, love to hear from you. Um, and again, if you have questions about software engineering, career development below in the comments, please. Or go to codecute.com. You can ask stuff anonymously that way and I'm happy to try making a video response for you because that's what this channel's all about. I'll see you in the next one. Take care.