SuCo Spotlight May ’25 – Mike Daugherty
This month SuCo wants to spotlight someone who makes the web look good and work even better, Mike Daugherty. Mike joined the team seven years ago and has lifted our websites to a whole new level ever since. His UI/UX skills are top-notch and his over 10 years of web development experience shows in every project Mike gets his hands on. As our Senior Front End Developer – Lead, Mike played a huge role in launching the third version of our external website platform, helping us create standout customer experiences and supercharging site speed. Mike is not only an amazing developer but also a trusted mentor, a go-to teammate and all-around fun to work with. Take a minute to learn a little more about Mike…
What’s one misconception people have about front-end development?
I think people often don’t know what is easy and what is hard in front-end development. Some things that look like they should be easy actually have a great deal of work that go into them to make them work properly. And other things that seem complex can be done fairly easily.
How do you balance functionality and design when building interfaces?
One of my favorite parts of web development is making sites that are not only functional but are also pleasant to look at and fun to interact with. We are fortunate to have a couple of great designers at SuCo that help create nice looking products. And one thing I appreciate is that I have a lot of freedom to add the touches I believe will make the sites look better. This typically includes animations, hover effects or other small touches that make the sites feel better to interact with. But ultimately what we build here has to get the user to move through the form from start to finish, so that takes priority over design.
What’s a project you’re particularly proud of, and why?
The project that I am most proud of here at SuCo is what we call V3. It is the platform that we use to build all our sites. This was a huge undertaking as we moved from React to Svelte and rewrote the entire platform and migrated all 150+ sites. Working with Kevin Halstead we spent over a year developing V3 in the midst of doing our day-to-day jobs. In the end it improved the speed of all our sites as well as the ease of development. Additionally, we added a great deal of flexibility to what we could do on each site, allowing us to try new things to see how the user would respond.
What’s your go-to song or playlist when you’re deep in coding mode?
I would say my go-to style of music is the blues, but I like a lot of different types of music, so at any given time if you step into my office, you may hear anything from 60s-70s classic rock, 90s alternative or even occasionally classical music. Pretty much anything but rap or country.
What’s a life motto or quote you try to live by?
I’m not really a motto/quote guy. But I think we as people often spend far too much time looking back and wishing we could have done better. So I try and do everything I can to the best of my ability and then next time I do it better. Knowing that when I look back at the early attempts they won’t be as good as they would be now but that’s not a failure, just a sign of growth, not something to be ashamed of.
