Meet the SideTour Team: Scott
Scott is part of the team making all the new SideTour website features a reality. He left Pittsburgh for New York and SideTour, but still plans on wearing his Evgeni Malkin jersey when the Rangers or Islanders play the Pens. In researching his photo selection for this piece, we also realized that he’s not one to shy away from a good costume.
Where’d you grow up?
My dad was a Marine, so for the first part of my life, I was kind of all over the place. I was born in California, lived in Japan for about 6 months, and then lived in Cincinnati until 4th grade when I moved to a small town in Pittsburgh that my parents grew up in named Brentwood. We had about 100 people in each graduating class, and about half of the teachers I had, my parents also had when they were in school.
What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?
My first real job after college was at a call center for a bank’s ATM network. There are a ton of stories about tech support over the phone being miserable, and this place was no different. It was a 24/7 call center which required two separate ID cards to get into and was run on a shoestring budget. The room hadn’t been cleaned in what had to have been years, even the keyboards and mice (we all shared and rotated desks every day and across shifts) were covered in a layer of grease.
Beyond the sanitary issues, you had no power to actually fix people’s problems the majority of the time, and everyone was constantly being sworn at and berated by the team lead for not working fast enough. I actually lasted about a year and a half there before moving on to my first engineering job where things were a lot nicer, to say the least.
Describe your perfect NYC day:
One of the things I really like about New York is that something unexpected or unique is always around the corner. Even my daily commute has a new interactive art installation this week made out of what looks like bike wheels, small plastic pools, and PVC pipe.
My perfect NYC day would be walking around with my girlfriend, Gretchen, who I moved to New York with and some friends just exploring different parts of the city we’ve never been to before (like on a SideTour maybe?), stopping in a bunch of different restaurants quickly to try them out, and then ending the night seeing some live music outdoors somewhere. The only thing that could make the day better would be if we actually had furniture and air conditioning to come home to.
What’s your favorite part of working at SideTour?
BristketLab unexpectedly (to me) taking over our office my second week is hard to beat, but everyone’s energy and excitement about the product is really what drew me to the company in the first place. Not only that, but seeing everyone you work with actually get excited when there is a new feature being rolled out is pretty amazing.
Favorite NYC hang-out?
Since I’ve only been here about a month, it is hard to pick one of the few places I’ve been as my favorite hangout out, but I guess since moving in to my place I’ve spent more nights at the Bourgeois Pig on 7th Street than anywhere else. Most nights of the week they have a half price bottle special, and while I haven’t tried the fondue yet, I have basically been surviving on their charcuterie board. It’s also right down the street on my new block, so I guess this probably means I need to explore a lot more.
