Profile: Mikhail Sinanan, Senior Mobile Developer
“Every day, I get to build something that has never been built before and help make our products better.”
Editor’s note: Mikhail left NPR to pursue a new opportunity at Capital One in August 2017. We miss him and wish him all the best in his future endeavors, and we have maintained his original profile below for posterity.
Where are you from originally?
I was born in Trinidad and Tobago, but I grew up mostly in south Florida.
What did you major in in college?
Computer Science and Business at Florida State University. Go Noles!
When did you join NPR?
April 2013.
What are you currently working on, or what have you recently worked on?
I’m working on redesigning the NPR News App. Our goal is to bring the app up to par with the rest of our digital products. I was a part of the NPR One team for the past 3.5 years and learned many things from our audience that will be useful for this redesign. I’m also looking forward to making some of our codebase modular, separating it into standalone components, so we can leverage them in both applications.
How did you get into mobile app development?
When people say timing is everything, it’s an understatement about how important it was for me to get into mobile development. I can remember the days in high school when I would research the latest phones on gsmarena.com and bootstrapping the initial Android OS onto my Windows HTC Raphael in college. I’ve always been fascinated with mobile phones, but I had no idea about how to get into the industry. I majored in Computer Science but to be honest, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a developer towards the end. However, in my very last semester at college, my school offered its first ever mobile programming course, Intro to Android Development. This was a game-changer. This class reinvigorated me to become a developer and I was able to get an iOS developer internship at SAS because of it. Needless to say, I am very glad I didn’t decide to graduate a semester earlier.
What personally excites you about being a developer?
I love having the ability to create something new or improve it. Every day, I get to build something that has never been built before (to some degree) and help make our products better. It’s a great feeling to see the apps I’ve worked on helping people in their daily lives.
What is your favorite Serendipity Days project that you worked on?
My favorite aspect of Serendipity Days is the variety of ideas that come to the table. My top 3 projects are definitely a great example of the range it can have. The first was a Tiny Desk App that integrated with Chromecast, a first for me to bring a mobile experience to the living room. The second project was integrating the NPR API with IFTTT. This was all back-end processes and one of the only projects I’ve worked on that didn’t involve any UI, which is very different from my day-to-day. The last project that I really enjoyed was getting to be a photographer for a day. I loved that it had nothing to do with coding and I could improve a completely different skill set.
What are some of your hobbies and interests?
I’m passionate about most gadgets, including but not limited to phones, tablets, and watches. It’s one of the key reasons I love working in the mobile space. Another hobby of mine is building home theater systems. I enjoy connecting all the components together and making adjustments to get a truly immersive experience. I’m the type of person that goes through every device’s menu and adjusts every setting. My newest hobby is photography. I’ve been fortunate enough to travel to some interesting places recently, so it seemed like a great idea to learn how to capture these moments. However, it’s come to my attention that the subject of most of my photos is food. I’ve become one of those people.
What is your favorite Tiny Desk Concert out of the ones you attended?
This is a tough one, but I’m going to have to say T-Pain. I grew up in Florida and spent 4 years in Tally, so I have many memories with T-Pain songs as the soundtrack. It was amazing to hear him show off his vocal abilities without the auto-tune.
Aside from the Tiny Desk Concerts, what are some of your favorite things about working at NPR?
The people. I get to work with crazy talented individuals every day, who care about each other and about the mission of public radio. Getting to work on world class products is a plus.
What are some tech conferences you have attended in the past, and what were your key takeaways?
I’ve attended both WWDC and Google I/O a few times over the last 3 years. They both are a lot of fun and very informative. Google I/O tends to have a nice blend of medium to high-level takeaways with plenty of crazy stuff in between. WWDC definitely reminds me of college. You’ll have a schedule of sessions that are very in-depth and more dev focused than most sessions at Google I/O. I actually went to WWDC this year and wrote about my takeaways from it. Check out my WWDC post here.
