
Professional Development Articles
We’re curious people by nature. And we love to teach others what we’ve learned. So explore our blog to gain fresh insights from our expertise in areas ranging from culture to AI.
SEP Wins TechPoint’s 2025 Exceptional Employer Mira Award
SEP Recognized as Indiana’s Top Tech Employer, Winning TechPoint’s Prestigious Mira Award Westfield, Indiana - SEP has been named Exceptional Employer by TechPoint at the 26th annual Mira Awards. This award recognizes companies that are developing talent through skills-based hiring…
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In March 2022, two senior SEP engineers and I built a Hackathon project together. In brief, the project aimed to give users a report ranking their routes to work based on the number of potholes they would encounter along the way. We had a great time, and were able to reach our goals. The project […]
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How to Be Successful at SEP
The following document is based on advice shared with all new employees (SEPeers) on their first day at the company. Here at SEP, we all come from different backgrounds; some of us have years of experience at other companies, and others have come straight from school. We are not just engineers, but also testers, designers, […]
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Friday’s 13 Tips to Overcome Design Workshop Facilitation Nerves
Facilitating design workshops can oftentimes feel as scary as Friday the 13th. The nerves that build up moments before meeting with a client can feel the same as the nerves I would get as a kid while watching the classic 80’s slasher film as Jason skulked around Camp Crystal Lake. In both scenarios, I was/am […]
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Networking Engineers
One of the most useful skills I picked up during my Ph.D. studies was how to turn light refreshments into a whole meal. The trick is to combine hunger and the ability to ignore shame for personal gain. Then one needs only spend an awful lot of time at the end of an event milling […]
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Why I cancelled my sprintly manager meeting
… and started meeting weekly instead. (gotchia 😉) Some people enjoy small talk. Some of my closest friends are small-talkers. I have nothing against the small-talkers. I just am totally incapable and – if I’m being honest – a little socially inept since all this quarantining started. Meetings with my manager were always dangerously close […]
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This one’s for you, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi fans
If you’ve read Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, or even if you’ve just seen a diagram like this one and it inspired you to figure out which activities put you in flow… boy, do I have a blog post for you ???? I have to admit I never read the book, […]
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What Does It Mean to be a Senior Engineer?
As a team lead, I coach and mentor many junior engineers. One topic that always comes up is “What does it mean to be a Senior Engineer?” That’s easy, you just… have a four-year degree from an accredited college? Work for 10 years and don’t get fired? Learn 3 front-end technologies? Check some boxes on […]
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Introducing the Professional Development Canvas
It is a developed skill to take all the different things in my life and answer two questions, “What should I learn next,” and “How am I going to learn it.” I’ve had twenty years to figure out how to self-direct my learning. In addition, I’ve had some semi-professional experience in developing my training materials […]
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Why We Started Book Clubs at Work
We started book clubs at SEP over a decade ago. Since then, we’ve had over 100 book clubs, with more than 75% of the company participating in at least one book club! Book clubs have been such an integral part of SEP’s group learning for a long time – how did this happen anyways? Why […]
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