What is your title, and how long have you worked here?
Senior engineer? I actually don’t know my title. I’ve been working with the company in some capacity since October 2012.
How did you end up at Informed K12?
I was chatting with Qian during my lunch break at my previous company. She was running into issues trying to split a PDF up into separate pages. I asked her to give me access to the code and was able to help her debug the problem. Turns out RMagick is the only Ruby library that supports splitting up multi-page PDFs. Or was at the time. [Ed. Note: Rob has since become a maintainer of RMagick]
What trait makes you good at your job?
My comfort with ambiguity. It occasionally gets me into trouble, but I’m quick to want to jump into coding on projects even with incomplete information. Sometimes things turn out to be surprisingly easy, and other times it helps to better understand the architectural needs for planning.
What’s been the most important thing you’ve learned in your time here?
With coding: the value of code consistency. Having consistent code style and patterns makes it so much easier for debugging and development. With team: how to say less and let other people speak more.
What’s the best thing that’s happened to you in the last three days?
I finished roofing our shed, just in time for a day of heavy rain. Still plenty of work to be done painting it, though.
What is your favorite company/team thing?
How down to earth we are as a company. We’re not trying to “disrupt” anything or be the next unicorn. We’re just trying to reliably provide valuable tools to hard working school districts. And that extends to how we value our team. We actively try to develop systems and processes that will help us to deliver consistently and avoid crunch times.
One thing that surprised you about working here?
How adaptable our co-founders are. They are learning constantly, listening to customers and our team. They don’t get attached to a particular approach, and when new evidence comes in they figure out how to incorporate that into the direction of the company.
Interested in working with Rob? We have a very human and respectful interview process and... We're hiring!
