Solomon Montagno

Get to know Solomon Montagno

What are you looking for in your next role?

I would be happy working for a small, mid sized, or large company. I am eager to work in a collaborative professional community that is committed to making excellent products, while also caring for their employees and surrounding community. I hope to find a company that places emphasis on mentorship, upward mobility, and high standards for quality of work.

Why did you decide to change career and/or educational paths? What was your prior path and how did you end up down that road initially?

In my past job I was a Program Director for a local non-profit called CitySprouts, that was focused on teaching science to public school students using school gardens. In this role I managed a team of 8. I have always been an avid gardener as a hobby. I also have a lot of professional experience working in youth development. Working for CitySprouts I was able to merge my hobby and professional experience. This was great for a while but I began to realize that constantly working in school gardens left me no time for my own home garden! I didn't like that my hobby had become my work and all the stress that came with it. Additionally, I have always wanted to work in tech. Until recently, it felt like a pipe dream. After 7 years at CitySprouts it was time for a change and I wanted to make that dream come true. That is when I found Launch Academy and decided to take my first steps towards a career in tech.

Where have you been involved in the tech community (events attended, volunteer activities, etc.)?

Until recently I have mainly been involved in the non-profit community of Cambridge and Boston. I am looking forward to joining the tech community and learning more about the people who make it!

What has been the most fulfilling aspect of your journey towards becoming a web developer? What's been your biggest challenge and how have you overcome it?

I have always been interested in computer programming and web development but never had the confidence to pursue these career fields. This was partly due to the fact that I thought it would be too academically challenging to be successful. Having gone through Launch, I now realize how wrong I was! It has been immensely gratifying to learn how to code and actually be successful in doing so. Watching my apps come to life and work as intended has been an amazing experience. While at Launch Academy there have been numerous challenges but one in particular comes to mind and that is test anxiety. I was very nervous before the first system check and that definitely made it hard to concentrate or handle bugs in my code. I had to remind myself to take a breath and go slowly through the code and not to rush. Eventually, the test anxiety began to fade and I felt more comfortable doing the system checks!

If you had an unlimited budget and resources, what would you build?

As an avid gardener I would like to build an application that will tell me exactly when my plants need to be watered and how much water to use. Specifically, I would have a piece of hardware, call it a "spike", in a pot or garden bed that is calibrated to that specific plant, soil type, and weather conditions. The spike would be able to tell the amount of water in the soil and coordinate the soil type and weather to determine when the next watering should happen. I would then get a notification on my application telling me to water, how much to water, and the amount of time I have before my plant becomes water stressed. This could be scalable to larger gardens and farms with the idea of reducing water waste and increasing crop yields by never putting plants in a water stressed state and allowing farmers and gardeners to have a better sense of the conditions in their soil. Imagine a network of evenly spaced spikes in a large farm that could tell the farmer that the northwest quadrant of the farm is dry and needs to be watered. This would allow pinpoint precision for water usage on the farm and heavily reduce water waste by only watering where it is needed.