{"id":46271,"date":"2015-08-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-08-30T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gengo.com\/uncategorized\/faces-of-gengo-jamie\/"},"modified":"2019-10-23T17:45:07","modified_gmt":"2019-10-23T08:45:07","slug":"faces-of-gengo-jamie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gengo.com\/community\/faces-of-gengo-jamie\/","title":{"rendered":"Faces of Gengo: Jamie"},"content":{"rendered":"As Gengo\u2019s Project Management Lead, Jamie manages orders for our biggest enterprise clients, such as QuizUp<\/a> and TripAdvisor<\/a>. This entails devising workflows for each project, finding qualified translators and communicating directly with the client to get relevant information and feedback.<\/span>\r\n\r\nTogether with his team\u2014who are based in Berlin, London, Tokyo, and San Mateo\u2014he helps to test and QA new products with our translators before being released to the entire pool.\r\n\r\nNationality:<\/b> \u00a0American<\/span>\r\nHometown:<\/b> Missoula, Montana<\/span>\r\nLanguages:<\/b> English, Japanese and German<\/span>\r\nEducation: <\/b>BA Japanese, University of Montana; MA Japanese Literature, Portland State University; Inter-University Center (IUC) for Japanese Language Studies, Yokohama<\/span>\r\n\r\nWhere have you lived before, and what were your previous roles?<\/b>\r\n\r\nWhile attending college, I lived in Missoula but studied abroad in Vienna for one semester and Kumamoto, Japan, for one year. After graduating, I lived in Yokohama for one year before returning to the U.S. and completing my masters degree in Portland. After that, I moved to the Bay Area and started translating for Gengo in the Japanese to English language pair. I then became an intern for three months within the Projects team, after which I was hired as a full-time employee.\r\n\r\nHow would you describe living and working in San Mateo?<\/b>\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s pretty fun. Our office is right in downtown San Mateo and we\u2019re surrounded by lots of restaurants and places to see. Although our office is small, we all work closely together and get along well. There\u2019s always something to do in the area, and we\u2019re only about 20 miles from San Francisco, too.\r\n\r\nHow long have you worked at Gengo?<\/b>\r\n\r\nI started as an intern in January 2013 and became a full-time employee in April that year.\r\n\r\nWhat drew you to the company?<\/b>\r\n\r\nI wanted to make money with my skills I had gained from my time at IUC. One of my friends, who was a Senior Translator at myGengo\u2014as it was called at the time\u2014told me to check out the company.\r\n\r\nWhat do you most enjoy about your role?<\/b>\r\n\r\nI really like working with our translators and hearing their feedback about Gengo. Although I work with a lot of different translators across most of our language pairs, I often work with the the same translators and get to know them well.\r\n\r\nI also have a lot of diversity in my daily tasks. The projects team mainly exists to deal with assignments that happen outside the main Gengo system. So we\u2019re regularly handling something new, whether a project, client or file type. I\u2019m usually working with new clients and workflows, which means I often face new challenges. My work is always fun and I\u2019m lucky enough to never get bored.\r\n\r\nWhat have been some of your challenges, and how have you overcome them?<\/b>\r\n\r\nWe often have customers who want particular end products that our system currently can\u2019t provide within our existing quality tiers. So we have to go beyond this limitation for our customers and devise a tailored solution for them. For example, we may be asked to QA a website, or do cursory or secondary checks on their translations.\r\n\r\nMy team\u2019s challenge is to figure out how to give the customer what they want with our somewhat limited resources.\r\n\r\nHow has Gengo changed since you started working here?<\/b>\r\n\r\nThe main thing is that the faces have changed. I\u2019ve only worked in the San Mateo office and, when I started at Gengo, there were only five of us here. At that time, our office was within another company\u2019s space. Now, we have our own office with around 15 employees, and are still growing.\r\n\r\nWhat has been your biggest achievement within the company?<\/b>\r\n\r\nI\u2019m proud that I progressed from intern to head of the Projects team\u2014it\u2019s really cool that you can grow so much within the company. I\u2019m happy that I\u2019ve earned the trust of the rest of Gengo to able to do that.\r\n\r\nIn the future, the Projects team will grow and my challenge will be to manage a much bigger team.\r\n\r\nWhat are you most excited about for the future at Gengo?<\/b>\r\n\r\nI\u2019m very excited about the work that our engineers have been doing as well as the new tools they\u2019ve been creating. These will really help my team, and will solidify Gengo as a really unique option within the translation space.\r\n\r\nI\u2019m looking forward to seeing where the company goes from here and how we will grow in different regions.\r\n\r\nWhat do you think makes Gengo a great place to work?<\/b>\r\n\r\nI\u2019ve always tried to be as cosmopolitan as possible through living in different places and learning languages, so I think one of Gengo\u2019s strong points is that it\u2019s so multicultural.\r\n\r\nPeople from all over the world work for us so, as an employee, you\u2019re always exposed to different cultures and ways of thinking, making work fun and interesting.\r\n\r\n\"FoG_gengons-jamie_sub\"<\/a>\r\n\r\nWhat do you do in your spare time? \u00a0<\/b>\r\n\r\nI play lots of video games, especially the Final Fantasy series. I read a lot\u2014I recently read some really good short stories by Etgar Keret<\/a>, an Israeli author. I also love Star Trek<\/a> and like going to conventions, which are held every year in the Bay Area. Since I\u2019m from Montana, I like baking Huckleberry<\/a> pies, too!\r\n\r\nWant to become a Gengo translator?<\/strong>\r\n\r\n