Josh Bio Photo

Joshua Ganderson is a front end software engineer located in San Francisco, CA. Currently working at Google, previous work experience includes NASA, Sun Microsystems and MySQL.

Joshua was born 1978 in Bremerton Washington. He has one brother, Adam, a graduate of MIT and Yale who is currently pursuing a career as a stage manager (Derry, NH). His father Stpehen, who passed away in September 2010, was an accomplished OBGYN in the Syracuse area and a US Navy veteran. His mother, Norma, is an orthopedic nurse but may be better known for her years owning/running a beloved teddy bear store (MaMa Bears) and her activism with breast cancer awareness.

While attending Carnegie Mellon University, first pursuing a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Joshua switched focus to the arts and graduated with a Bachelors in Industrial Design and a minor in Photgraphy and Film. Other academic pursuits ranged from computer animation to modern dance, mixed media sculpture and electronic music.

Following graduation, an uncertain job market led to a move to Austin TX, where a low cost of living and plentiful technical jobs offered opportunities not found for junior designers at the time. After taking a web design position at an email services startup, Skylist, he started down a path towards software development and application architecture and design. Once Skylist was sold to a direct marketing firm with little interest in software development, an opportunity was accepted at MySQL to develop enterprise web tools. A few years later, a similar corporate shakeup occurred when MySQL was sold to Sun Microsystems, spurring a move to a more senior position at NASA. While the role at NASA was extremely rewarding, budgetary issues with the Planetary Data System forced a drastic staff reduction and required a generalization of roles and overextension of remaining staff. While a difficult choice, an opportunity at Google proved too attractive to pass up in the face of further budgetary uncertainties.

Joshua's hobbies include dance, hiking, photography, and film. Depending on the weather, each weekend he'll either be found photographing his way through a previously unvisited part of the bay area or camped out on his couch with a few friends, bottles of wine, and good movies. In his spare time, he also tinkers with the development of a PHP web framework, the first iteration of which runs this website.