I’m Tyler Sustare. An engineering leader from Bend, Oregon.

I’ve always loved being a coach and a mentor. My dream was to become a baseball coach after playing professional baseball. Now, I scratch that itch in my career as a programmer as a manager and lead engineer. I also enjoy being an adjunct professor now and then for my local branch of Oregon State University.

I first went to college to play baseball while degree in marketing in order to stay eligible for the season. After pro baseball didn’t work out, I got a job in a digital marketing firm where I maintained Google, Facebook, etc. AD campaigns.

While I was working with online ads I found I could script most of the work I was doing in order to create more effective AD campaigns. I quickly became addicted to this little taste of programming. I thought “I want to do this for a living instead.“

This lead to me going back to school to get a Computer Science degree while working full time in order to get my first full-time programming job. Knowing what I know now, getting my CS degree wasn’t fully necessary, but I’m glad I did to get a good foundation. Going back to school while working also gave me the thirst to keep learning even while fully employed. That work ethic has stuck with me. Constantly learning and working on my craft as a programmer is second-nature from my background in sports.