Always Moving Forward: Jesse’s Journey 2 Years in

We’re not known for standing still at Continental. We believe that change is good and shouldn’t be feared. We also believe that growth doesn’t always happen in your comfort zone, so we live for innovation and progress – with our products and people.

We encourage our people to strive for what challenges and motivates them. But don’t just take our word for it. Here’s what Jesse Hacker, one of our Software Engineers, had to say about his experience since he joined our company in May 2016.

He was telling me about how Continental was making cars drive themselves and some of the advanced safety features that require a lot of AI and new technologies, which have always been areas of interest for me.

A large section of my background was in the video game industry, and I am always looking for ways to use that part of my skillset wherever I go. When I interviewed at Continental, we discussed the new and interesting problems being tackled and outside-the-box approaches being taken – and talked about it like it was a toy box – I knew right away that was the kind of culture I wanted to be in.

On my team I’ve worked on projects that allow me to take advantage of my previous experience, like advanced presentations with visual flair or a lot of real-time simulation.

I’m a programmer, because I like problem solving. I’ve always enjoyed the challenge of, “Hey, nobody has figured out this problem before – can you figure it out?” And even if you don’t figure it out the first time, everyone on the team has the mindset that even if you don’t solve something, as long as you learned something, then the time wasn’t wasted.

It’s awesome to go to CES from the standpoint that, growing up going through college and in my previous jobs, I always wanted to be at CES just because it was the place where everyone announced all their new and experimental tech stuff. Now, I’m responsible for something that gets shown at CES and, while it’s still a little surreal to me, it makes me proud.