Land ho! New challenge ahead.

A few months ago I posted about the situation at my former company and the uncertain future of our team. During these 3 months we explored many new opportunities and interviewed with many companies, from startups to consolidated giants, from financial market to education and user feedback, it was an amazing journey.

This journey is now over and I have found my new challenge, but more on that in a bit. Let me tell you a bit more about the journey.

Interviewing as a team

Few months ago Stripe posted an article about hiring teams and the benefits of that, I would like to also mention the benefits of interviewing as a team.

Our team went to many interviews as a full team, either together in big meetings or as individuals. The interesting aspect of this is that since we were a diverse group of people with many different roles, we analyzed companies from various angles, some of which I, in my interviewing experience, may never have thought to look into.

This made for a very fulfilling and unique experience, I got a lot more insights into companies than ever before. How does the business decide on features, how is UX looked after outside of screens, how do you make money and down to our usual questions of code/infrastructure.

If you ever get a chance to coordinate as a group and exchange notes on interviews, I do recommend doing so.

What’s next?

I’m happy to announce my next challenge, not just because I’m very excited to join the company and add to the great work they already do, but also because I was lucky enough to bring Rick Buitenman, my former manager, and Pauline Vos, my former “mentee”, along for the ride.

As of the first of July we will all be part of the Usabilla family!

Usabilla is a big player in the Dutch tech scene, a company built on the belief that continuous user feedback is the key to successful products. Their focus is on providing “Voice of Customer” solutions to help their more than 20K clients improve their user experience, conversions and boost customer satisfaction.

If you have ever used websites like ABN AMRO, KLM, HP, Philips, Vodafone and countless others, you may have noticed a feedback button, that is one of the many tools Usabilla provides.

I’ll be joining them as Lead Backend Engineer, where I’ll be able to focus on my 3 personal passions: coding/architecture, development work flow and growing/mentoring developers. Together we hope to take the platform to new levels of architecture, quality and performance.

Apart from coding, I’ll be working with the development team to take our development practices to even higher levels and make sure we are all learning and growing all the time. I love teaching and exposing people to more knowledge so this should feel right at home for me.

I’m also looking forward to learning from a entire new set of great developers as well as also getting a chance to expand into Golang which is in line with my own personal goals for this year.

I’m very excited to dive into the company and see how I can contribute to a great business and an amazing team.