Jim Tierney.

I try to take my work seriously without taking myself too seriously.

How I See Things

I come from a visual arts background. So, while I like code (and generally enjoy coding), and I pride myself on my code quality and readability, I am a visual person first, and so while I do always want to make sure my code is up to snuff, and while I also have A LOT of opinions about how relevant a term like 'pixel perfection' is in the age of responsive designs, in general, I do feel that a big part of frontend development is making sure a developer is doing their best to realize the creative vision of whatever they're making...

...while also, making sure EVERYONE can use what they're making, which will include championing users as well as those with disabilities whenever possible.

At A Glance

Location: Milwaukee, WI

Previous Work History:

1. Hanson Dodge: Frontend Team Lead - 9ish years
2. ascedia: Frontend Dev, Frontend Supervisor, Technical Team Lead - 5.5 years
3. Smart Marketing for Small Businesses: Graphic designer, creative director, frontend web developer - 4.5 years

My Background

When I was in art class in grade school doing figure drawing, I had an older art teacher tell me how artists were always employable, because even if you weren't gonna be out there selling artwork, advertising agencies would always need someone who could render out imagery.

Photoshop came out either that year or the year after.

There have been so many career paths and jobs I'd considered doing while growing up, only to watch most of those get either destroyed or dramatically altered/reduced by computers and the internet.

When I got out of college (with a fine arts degree) and wanted to promote my work, I made myself a website to do so. Everyone I talked to about my work or showed my stuff to asked me more questions about the website than they did about my art. This reoccurring situation became hard to ignore.

Eventually I said screw it, and leaned into tech, and I haven't really looked back since.

Where I'm at Now

I've spent the last almost 20 years working in advertising agencies and working on all kinds of projects. Ideally I'll even post about them on this website eventually.

In August of 2025, my position at the last agency was terminated due to a lack of billable work for a full-time frontend developer, and I wasn't interested in shifting to part-time or freelance work.

Since then, while looking for my next opportunity, I've been taking time to re-evaluate my existence, think about what it is I care about, and consider where I want to go from here. This has lead me to put together what I think is the most accurate (if somewhat vague) summary/objective:

I’m looking for an opportunity to join an engineering team with hard problems to solve, plenty of things to learn, and goals to regularly work to make sites, apps, and software better and incrementally improve everything.

If you've read this far, thanks! If you'd like to chat, feel free to reach out (link below for email) and if you want the formal bullet points of my professional existence for some reason, you can find a link to my resume below.