I worked at DirectPO during the summer before my Senior Year at the University of Missouri - Columbia.

My friend Matt had seen a flyer advertising for a PHP developer, and I had been doing a decent amount of PHP work at that time so he mentioned it to me. He had been, as well, so we both applied for the position. Unfortunately for Matt, I had a bit more experience at the time and they ended up only being able to hire one of us, so that ended up being me. To my credit, I did go a fair bit out of my way to try to get Matt a position, so I don't feel entirely bad. But I do feel a little bad - sorry Matt.

At DirectPO we built a textbook buyback web application. I was responsible for writing the layer of PHP code that interacted with the database and provided easy functional access to the data. It lasted 3 months, and it was my first experience with team oriented development, so I learned a lot about CVS as well as the social side of things.

The experiences I gained from this position likely sealed the deal on my first job after college.