Hey Bret, What Do You Do?!

Bret Morris is the Director of Technology at Use All Five, and he's been with the company for over 9 years. He's a budding golfer, Rubio's fanatic and Dodger obsessive. People often ask Bret what he does for work, so we thought we would too.

Do people get what you do? If not, what’s the most often heard misinterpretation?
It depends on the generation of the person I’m talking to: age 50+ has a difficult time grasping what I do. The separation between design and development of the web is typically the first hurdle most people face; their eyes glaze over while I attempt to explain that my job typically involves converting someone else’s design into code.

What’s your elevator pitch to describe what you do?
I’m a web developer, which means that I build websites by converting web page designs into code. This can be achieved with several different coding languages, but typically, I work in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Some websites are very simple, while others get complex especially when you factor in things like animated interactions, accessibility and communicating with a content management system (CMS). Like anything else, there are multiple ways to skin the cat, so a big part of the job is understanding how to architect a website correctly for the ideal user and developer experience (UX and DX). That skill mostly comes with experience & it separates junior from senior developers.

How would you describe what you do if it was your best friend asking?
I write code or review other people’s code, sometimes there are a few meetings scattered in, and every once in a while we actually launch a website.

If someone were to ask at the end of a long day at work, how would you describe the day you just had?
I spent a lot of time on StackOverflow trying to solve a bug on a site I’m building only to find out that I misspelled a variable :-/