Johnny Lam, Firmware Engineer and colleague at Hewlett Packard:

Jacob was a wonderful addition to the firmware community at HP. While he was raw, he brought a hard working and quick learning attitude. He came into his own rather quickly and was a wonderful person to work with.

Richard K. Miller, Technical Director, More Good Foundation, Orem Utah:

Jacob is a sharp developer who doesn’t need hand-holding. He developed a feature of our system that we didn’t spec out–we had only a rough idea of what we wanted–and we love what he built. He also took responsibility for another large project (a Nutch search engine) and took it entirely from start to finish. Like well encapsulated code, we didn’t have to worry about how it was done — it was just done.

Alex Esplin, currently Software Engineer at Adaptive Computing, previously a colleague at BYU Department of Chemistry Computer Support:

Jacob was an extremely skilled web developer with a great understanding of the needs of the department and how to implement them in a standards-compliant, intelligently designed way. He was a key factor in major improvements to the department website both in standards compliance and in usability enhancements. In addition to his role as the lead for the department’s web development he was a great resource for discussion about computer science classes I was taking that he had taken previously, and was very knowledgeable especially regarding systems programming topics.

Bruce Christensen, currently Embedded Software Engineer at Apple, previously a colleague at BYU Chemistry Department Computer Support:

Jacob was an excellent coworker—creative, technically sharp, hard working, customer focused, and always looking for ways to improve things. Jacob is a top-notch engineer. He consistently created well-engineered, well-documented, on-time, understandable, maintainable solutions that our users and management loved. He also often surprised me with how fast he could crank out a quick-and-dirty solution to an immediate problem. He was quick to learn new technologies and stay on top of best practices. Jacob is one of the most customer-focused engineers I’ve ever worked with. He constantly analyzed usage data, talked to users, and developed custom instrumentation and analytics to understand our users’ needs. Jacob understands usability. I enjoyed being in the office when Jacob was around. He’s happy, funny, creative, and kind. I’d love to work with him again.

Scott Mcnew, currently a software development engineer at Amazon.com, previously a colleague at the BYU Chemistry Department computer support:

Jacob provided timely and professional web development services to the BYU Chemistry Department. His technical skills, can-do attitude, and friendly customer service ensured that the Chemistry Department’s faculty, staff, and students had continuous access to top quality web pages, content management systems, and computer support. He also demonstrated great peer leadership skills by mentoring junior computer support staff and leading weekly team meetings. He was a pleasure to work with during my school years and I would gladly work with him again.

Mike Knippers, currently software developer at Apple, previously colleague at the BYU Chemistry Department computer support:

I worked with Jacob for a couple years at the Chemistry Department at BYU.  He was the web page designer/maintainer and also managed our web servers.  Our site was always up-to-date and professional. He was fun to work with on the same team, easy to get along with and timely. He’s an asset to whomever he is working with.