During the winter break of 2012 I started to work at a Cincinnati company named SellYourMac.com with a few friends of mine. SYM is a used Apple product reseller that processes dozens of machines a day that it buys to resell. During the processing stage of a machine, an employee used to go through the machine and record all of the critical specifications by hand in their internal inventory system.
Recording this data by hand took a lot of time, about 10 minutes per machine, and was fraught with human error. I had started learning Python prior to joining SYM and began talking to some of my coworkers about ways to automate this specification gathering. Once my manager learned I knew how to code, he requested that I work solely on creating this automatic specification gathering tool (AutoSpec). In two weeks I was able to automatically pull all the required information from each individual machine and submit it to their internal inventory system using AutoSpec.
This tool I’d created in just a few weeks was able to save the company 10 minutes per machine it purchased to resell. The time savings alone was a massive benefit that allowed them to process more machines per day and generate a higher profit margin. The data accuracy gains ensured that their sales teams were pricing machines correctly based on exactly what was in each machine. This, again, increased profit margins by guaranteed that machines weren’t being over or under priced.
I ended up working for SYM on AutoSpec and other projects for nearly 7 years and learned a lot about professional communication, working with co-workers, and pitching new ideas to managers above me.s