Product Engineering and Development at Peatix

i know michael you're a director of engineering that's your title haley what what's your you're i know you're a front-end developer but was there an official job title that it um i i think yeah i think front-end web developer is probably the most um i know internally we use engineering but in canada we usually refer to that role as a as a web developer so okay yeah and do i call you sparks or haley either is fine either is fine but michael and dice what do you call how do you how do you refer to this person yeah you supposed to yeah often sparks because it's unambiguous okay you want to unify that code anyone else and sparks i don't know anyone else names fox we're doing this because uh we want to communicate what it's like to work at ptx and what where what we're all doing here and what it what it's like uh et cetera et cetera and then go to some very simple introduction self-introductions and then we'll go into the questions some of which we were so which we were talking about in the slack channel it'll be very simple probably 20 30 minutes but the whole point being that you know there's as i said there's not a lot of information or or content out there regarding ptx engineering and as we really try to expand the team um this will go up on youtube and other channels and you know candidates potential candidates can refer to this and just just get a feel for what it's going to be like awesome this makes sense we're already recording dice i also started my recording just to have a backup just in case it seems like just really relax be yourselves the whole point is to really make it from tomorrow you're changing modes for a bit right yeah i'm uh i'm gonna be off for a few weeks um absolutely cramming through coursework uh getting some assignments in and catching up uh prepping a little bit for exams so yeah it's a it's a bit of a change uh change of routine but it'll be nice to be able to switch focus for a bit and then come back with hopefully some of that um weight lifted off my shoulders so yeah looking looking forward to it but i'm gonna miss everyone it's gonna be weird not how long is this gonna be um all through february actually yeah okay just gonna change my background because i think we sort of need unified color all right are you all feeling good nice good is always unsure of how he's feeling i'm thinking i'm thinking no no you've got to really self-inspect how you feel yeah i think i'm feeling good just uh carl uh added a comment uh to um a two-year-old uh or i mean the last activity on this issue was two years ago related to event in events recurring events sessions within events you know and uh that's like the 10 year old question that we've been asking for and and uh i i it was i woke up in the middle of the night last night and i i saw that and i was like i need to share this before i forget it so i just shared the link and no one knew what i actually thought about it but it's just um i don't want us to engineer ourselves into a corner with this one but also this is a really hard one right when you think about the architecture how you you know there are elegant ways to do it and probably some messy ways to do it and that's what we always get stuck with this and that's how it's been for the past 10 years yeah and so with this one and carl's obviously super super sharp but uh we've got a whole batch of people that are joined last couple of years and so i just want it be nice if there's a cool discussion uh around it that happens and i think this is a great example of where we don't silo the event management program and we make sure that everyone can help carl out because uh especially with the move to vanilla for him to create something that creates a lot of work for everyone probably wouldn't make it so events within events has been prioritized it's one of the priorities for us this year by the way i think this is just going to be part of the content you know where we jump right in without us knowing but um yeah i mean you're making assumptions i actually read a comment that i liked uh let's see here i think recurring events is something that we're that we're focusing on is it yeah it makes sense yeah that i i bet that would be really valuable to people i will sorry i'm sorry to cut you off one day if you get phantom fan of the opera on t6 this will be perfect for it right or you can't come up with another example that season tickets for sports games or something yeah the halifax hockey team or whatever it is we do have a hockey team i'm sure you do moose heads i think you can tell i'm a big local sports person uh-huh what about the rest of the body of the moose uh that's a great question the sound disappeared for me the halifax moose heads is that the name of the team i think so i think that's the hockey team we have yeah the health is obviously not the national hockey league but like the division below that or something yeah the the local one there was a great movie called and i i i've told you many times but there's a great movie called goon which is based in halifax it's uh it's great i love that movie oh yeah well while we're at you know we've jumped right in why don't we just go through some self introductions uh well today's talk we just want to for the wonderful viewers out there who are going to see this uh the purpose of this is to to sort of um get you wonderful people here and talk about what it's like to work at ptx and some of the exciting stuff you're working on um and uh get people more people on board well dice just disappeared so i'm gonna start with you michael michael harris our wonderful director of engineering based in keep screwing this up so why don't you go ahead michael who are you what do you do but well since you've led off with that i'll start with where i am um i'm i'm based in uh adelaide and a 300 acre property in the clear valley which is about an hour and a half north of adelaide so i'm um yeah part towny part rural watching uh land fall apart around me and kangaroos in the background and kangaroos in the background and all of that sort of stuff yeah and sufficient internet to work remotely for a fun japanese startup um i've been at ptx for a bit over a year now started off managing the native apps team and have taken on the director of engineering role so i'm directly responsible for native apps still and for internal tools and what we're calling platform which is um low-level infrastructure stuff and also foundational uh technologies that other parts of the engineering team will rely on things like payments and session management things like that and also kind of responsible for with with dice the overall technical direction of engineering very cool uh we'll we'll get deeper into what you just talked about but uh haley haley sheen or otherwise known as scarlett sparks uh who are you and how long have you been here what do you do yeah thank you um i started uh at ptx about six months ago actually almost exactly about uh and you may be able to hear that i live in canada um i'm based in halifax and uh it's very very cold right now we had a lot of snow over the weekend um and yeah i uh i'm a front-end web developer so i uh write a lot of javascript and html and css and basically work on the parts of ptix that the users see and interact with directly so it's uh it's a really fun uh job i think because you get to make a big impact on things that people can directly see so today we've got our most northern employee and our most southern team member here today isn't that amazing uh dicey one brief introduction of yourself yes um i'm dice i am the vp of product engineering at ptx i've been here since uh august 2017 and i'm i'm here to to to build the the organization the technology organization that supports ptix and one of the missions is to um to really make technology part of etix you know make make sure that everyone at ptx feels supported and is supported by this team and vice versa yeah very cool so i'm otaku i depending on who you ask i'm either the ceo or the chief bus boy i just my job basically is to make sure we don't run out of coffee you know coffee or money that's that kind of thing all right how do we why don't we um i'm always amazed that you know we have people of your caliber in their team and because i'm really insecure i'm not too confident in myself like i always always wondering why the hell are you guys here um so i just want to ask you to like why why are you here why did you choose to to work at ptx or starting from you michael um well it started off that uh i knew a couple of people here already uh dyson and our colleague um oh by the way you well both of you are from en dice as well uh you you come from a wonderful company called github just yep we all three of us worked together at github um and that that has certainly been a theme of uh recent recruiting um because you recruit from your networks a little bit so yeah so dyson dyson sim were already here uh and i'd had a little break after github and was looking to get back into work but um wanted something that was a little bit of a different experience than working in a very fast growing american startup so for me uh ptix is is still relatively small uh in terms of number of people but it's established it's been around for a long time uh and uh it's um it's profitable so it's not not about to you know fall off the map or anything like that uh it's working on interesting problems uh the the focus on community is was a big selling point for me um especially taku in our interview that was kind of a selling selling point for me thank you and um i felt like uh that the size and position of the company and the space it's in meant that there was a lot of possibility to do really interesting things um so it's not a massive organization where you can only influence a tiny little bit um it's it's very agile so you you can actually do quite a lot across a very broad area and take interest in a lot of different things and that actually was absolutely what happened i started off as i said managing the native apps team and then we had a security incident six weeks after i started and i pivoted to to doing a lot of security work um and so then took a a more high level look at what was happening in the security space in the organization overall so it did actually work out how i thought it would work out when i was looking to start somewhere um it's also attractive that it's a japanese-based or predominantly japanese startup um and it's it's interesting to uh be working in japan and it's not not like you at us startups so what's more interesting what are some of the differences between you've been an american company now well what are we quasi quasi yeah these are american but can you maybe talk a bit about some of the differences whether it be organizational or cultural i think yeah the um it's hard to put my finger on it really um i think that i mean i i i was specifically not looking for a us startup because i think there's a very strong focus in on um fast growth and you know vc money and selling something and you know it's all a little bit um feels quite end serving like you you're really looking at that that exit and um it's not everyone that's like that there's obviously other examples um of that sort of thing but um ptx specifically and and i think japan startups japanese startups in general are kind of looking at a more sustainable um trajectory uh and it's not quite so focused on exit it's it's more about building something that's that's worthwhile and long-lived for the record we do want to grow fast though that would be ice the icing on the cake still still important but it's not it doesn't feel quite so frenetic and um it's it's pretty it's a relaxed growth even though the growth is happening right we want to look at things for the long term short-term games all the time which which i've noticed about america many american startups there are some japanese startups who have that who are in that mode of course but in our particular case i i like to think that we think term more than anything it certainly feels that way great thanks haley or sparks why are you here from halifax oh it's a hard act to follow because i feel like i would echo just about everything that michael just said but um yeah i i was really um excited about the opportunity to work again with michael and dice and sim and people who i i know are really great and the sort of people who would work with a really great team so it was a really great um how many times can i say great in one sentence um but it seemed like a an excellent opportunity to work with a team who really value communication and um and respect and um building great things at a sustainable pace and and making it worthwhile and uh and valuing community and uh that's uh really kind of my background uh you mentioned that we work together at github and that's how we know each other and i was actually in a very different role there i worked in customer support and primarily on things like user safety and you know anti-abuse and policy things and so it was a lot of trust and safety type work so it's a bit of a shift for me and it was exciting um to you know be early in my career as a developer and get to have a really supportive team uh that i was joining um and they and they really are the front-end team and the engineering team as a whole is just so helpful and so supportive but also as michael said to have the opportunity to still use all of those other community building skills and user experience type um background and not be sort of pigeon holed into like well your job is to make the button green you know um to join a company that's really focused on building something great that's good for users and good for communities and um really wants to do that right and wants to build a good internal culture and internal community as well was super important to me great so daisy you've obviously had a substantial role in sort of building that culture or the working style that haley just talked about like what is your ideal organization dice so um engineering organization there's uh uh let's see here there's there's there's three things that that off the top my head and i'll pretend like i planned this that that um i really you know just i i was at pdx before left experienced some things came back and felt like okay we can do this at ptx uh one thing is um i i realize that there's no um it's a false choice that um you have to accept bad behavior for someone because that person might be very talented at their job and um you know ptx engineering at the point that i joined ptx was small enough and you know there's a support from the rest of of management in the company where people like yeah that's great let's let's hire let's let's build a team of people that are caring this is supportive of each other and also by the way are great at building things so that's one thing that i really cared about um we [Music] had of the words character personality but we care a lot about that um when we're hiring and we're getting people to join the team and uh it's something that we we kind of look at in our interview process through how people there's take home examiner interview process and we can tell by how to a certain extent obviously um how people write their notes how they write you know their commit messages and whatever how the person is aware of their audience and things like that and um also through questions energy processes so we care about people that are talented but also are supportive of other people and want to work in an environment where they don't just you know do their own thing but they collaborate with other people to build um so that was the biggest thing the other was to um and and i bring this reference up a lot with taku because uh we're interested in sports but it's kind of the money ball thing where uh as a company there's a very specific you know set of challenges that we have in in being able to attract the kind of people that we want because guess what talented people that are also wonderful colleagues are rare well they aren't that rare but they have a pretty you know they can they can choose where they want to work at and so um we had to think of uh yes and that's getting a little bit intentional but what i was actually trying to say is that we really i also really care about whether or not people can communicate very clearly and um in writing and express themselves or or our interest in that and that leads to people that actually um not only do they bring things immediately that um we need um but also really want to continue to develop and grow and learn from everyone around them so um you know it might seem pretty clear if you're fairly early in your career as a developer uh like uh sparks with sparks was clear yes she uh i believe this is your first job as a developer is that kind of correct yeah that this is um but we already knew what she was going to bring beside the communication aspect and the fact that um she was going to be a really great example to other people about how to communicate how to update docs and all those things on the flip side we have people like michael and others who have been engineering or developing for a while yet they are still keen to learn um from other people and keen to learn not just from other senior people but from other junior people about you know just you don't know who you can learn from right so people that aren't making like an assumption that because they're senior they have nothing left to learn from junior people because uh there's a lot you know the space is constantly evolving and so we have a lot to learn at all times and so those kinds of people open mindsets about learning yeah so three things good personality communication skills and an open mindset about developing and learning great and these two in particular sort of encompass all three points right absolutely absolutely all right just talk talk a little bit about the working style of ptx you know you we are all mostly remote in different locations uh north south east and west um and dice just talked about the importance of communication documentation collaboration and what's that been like michael on an everyday basis what is your typical day look like so communication is a mix of slack and github issues and discussions on github um and video of some kind so my typical day i'm managing with quite a few people now so my typical day does involve a lot of time on video and i'm also collaborating with a lot of people on different things so more time on video um and um but the typical day starts off looking at slack and seeing what the current situation is getting a yeah a um temperature check um and generally things are pretty chill in the morning my time because i'm a couple of hours ahead of japan which is where where uh things usually happen um and then i'll catch up on any uh github issues and discussions that have happened overnight because that stuff goes on a little bit after i've left for the day because i am a couple of hours ahead of the rest of apac and communication is um i think pretty effective um people are quite you know there's no holding back people are happy to speak up about things and raise concerns about things and and discuss in the open um yeah it's a collegiate fun atmosphere and you work with or even manage people across many different time zones we're talking about japan um philippines uh you know north america how do you how do you get to relax how do you how do you you know build out your day so you have some downtime obviously that's which is very important yeah because you always so it seems so relaxed michael you're like i'm australian that's that goes a long way to help so just you know being on a farm with wonderful animals helps too yeah i mean i i love working remotely um i think that um when i started at github uh in the early it was a 2013 or something i was specifically looking for a fully remote um position and before that i'd kind of worked in quasi-remote positions anyway for quite a few years um most of the 2000s and so that flexibility of being able to step away from the computer and and you know go and sit in the backyard or go and walk in the hills or whatever when i'm you know getting some away time or getting some time where i want to actually think deeply about things without interruption or um that's super flexible um but i think the remote aspect is is massive to be able to to keep a balance for things um and you know occasionally um my wife will be making a cup of tea and bring me a cup and very cool um uh we're also very flexible in working hours so people will work whenever they want to work [Music] people make the decision themselves as to when they're most productive and sometimes that's six o'clock in the morning and sometimes that's you know midnight sometimes it's you know nine to five uh we've got kind of people who want to work all kinds of hours um time zones are difficult and i try and be as flexible as possible i think everyone tries to be as flexible as possible um but because i'm you know managing people then i'll meet people when they want to meet um which does mean some early mornings occasionally um i'm about to have uh someone who reports to me move from australia to the uk so that'll mean some some late nights but um it also means you know i just take breaks during the day and take time off and kind of try and work out a um a flow for the week that is not not too challenging and let's just make it very clear to anybody who sees this nobody is working 14 15 hours a day right no but very about passwords right yeah yeah uh sparks um what is your what's the communication with other team members been like it's um it's been again uh a lot of the same things uh that michael has already mentioned um but in the opposite um time zone so uh i'm in north america there's not a lot of the team in north america although luckily a lot of the front-end team is uh close to me so um it's rare um you know to have to kind of maneuver our schedules um to meet just within the front end team um but i'd say slack is generally pretty quiet uh during north american business hours but there's still a little bit of back and forth we all make a point of saying good morning to each other and um share emojis and gifs and stuff and uh and the north american team is starting to fill out so it's definitely getting a little bit chattier uh later in the day as well um but yeah otherwise um we do have uh some team members who either work a little bit later in north american hours or are based in the philippines um so when it comes to working on prs and issues um often i work a little bit earlier in the day and um so i'll have some kind of making progress on something that i won't necessarily see a reply to until i log back in the next morning um so the pace is um not as quite not quite as much a rapid fire back and forth as if everyone were working in the same time zone but i think that that's helpful in some ways to give a little bit of breathing room for things and to be able to to think about things and work on things um at a a reasonable pace without having to rush to try and you know get things out um on somebody else's schedule so it's i've found that very helpful because as again someone newer in my uh engineering career i um sometimes do need a little bit more time to think things over to research solutions uh for some of the stuff that i'm working on um but luckily you know i've also got a couple of team members who are nearby that i can ping in slack and say like oh hey i'm working on this thing i'm having trouble with it do you mind pairing for a half an hour i'm setting up time for that and uh so i've got a couple of folks that i can usually tap on the shoulder if i need to and um yes and who do who do you communicate with the most are other front-end developers or product managers yeah i would say um it just so happens that um the other uh minia who's the front-end manager uh and yula who is another front-end developer are both um based only a one-hour time difference away from me so i'd say they're the ones that i end up uh talking to probably the most but there's a few other folks from the more back end side of things who are based in north america now as well so i get to talk to them a little later in the afternoon and um and uh and then i do try to have uh some times that are a little bit of an overlap with uh you know later in the day when the rest of the world uh comes back online for their morning um that's usually the best time to do deployments um because there's you know more people around to have eyes on things if there's any questions or luckily nothing's blown up on me when i tried to deploy but it's nice to know that there are other people around um rather than having to to go it alone so i i usually try and um save that type of work for times when i you know know that other people are around and that's a great opportunity to get to catch up with the the folks who are working on more you know platform or security or back-end things as well and obviously it will because we're growing rapidly things will be very different a year from now yeah more people maybe not in halifax itself but uh sort of around your time zone um does he have any a word or two on you know you you you you're the guy who thinks about communication open communication the most collaboration um you're a stickler for that right and you you want you to talk a bit about your philosophy about working with each other and how we communicate and that's probably your answer will probably be two two hours long but so shorten that up well i mean at the end of my answer i want to ask you since you said recently oh i'm starting to get it i'd like to for you to tell me what you're saying at um open communication is um is uh yeah it's just you know meetings are fine like having video calls or meeting face-to-face you know pre-covered it's fine but um uh not regardless of whether we're distributed or not it's always good to write things down so that we know the voices document everything yeah and we could catch up and we know the whys of what we're doing and um that was something that was really helpful to me when i joined and i was on boarding from you know the opposite time zone from a lot of people was knowing that there was a written conversation and a written record of things was super helpful sorry to interrupt but she wanted to yeah no that was that's exactly correct because when you have um i was kind of hoping back when i joined 2017 that we would be able to be supportive of a lot of people joining from all over the world because going back to the thread that i kind of ended in the middle um being able to hire all of you know in different countries and letting people work remotely was going to have to be our kind of flexibility in order to get the people that we really want to hire um right and the money ball thing having open communication have having he takes a whole buy into that was going to be crucial because then people don't feel left out uh people don't have to wait you know someone like sparks maybe she's working with not a project but someone in tokyo or or i think she's working with a pm out here in in apac you know she doesn't have to wait eight ten hours to get confirmation every single time if it's written down and you know if everything's written down even if there's something that she needs to confirmation on there's probably four or five other things that are written down that she can look at instead so yeah open communication was just gonna be crucial for us to be able to grow as a company and um and um for us to not let things fall through the cracks still a lot of work to do um [Music] i think it's it's sort of natural that people just levitate towards having a meeting uh for all for everything but i i think minimizing the number of meetings is really important and and just in lieu of that documenting whether it be a video record maybe a video recording at times just just the recording stuff documenting stuff is and getting all that information out in the open so that anybody can access it if they choose to do so uh so nice i'm starting to get it that's my point and uh yeah what's been good about it for you like i said the information is out there i can now there are improvements that we need to make and you know making it easier to find that information obviously but uh knowing that the information is somewhere is this is something that it's really different from you know seven eight years ago we were first starting out um [Music] and so that's been sort of comforting to know that it's out there somewhere and i could just search around and and i don't have to ask people bother people to get that information um i like your point about dice about not communicating in closed channels making decisions in closed channels let the discussion be out in the open as much as possible that's very important too i don't know if you want to speak to that a bit about that but um there are some conversations that can happen in dms and and private channels acknowledging that first but as much as possible the default is is is is to use you know we use slack and we use github try not to make it private because um there are some critical decisions that you might reach in the most um casual chats and um you might try to summarize your points but uh again seeing the the the the context in the background of how that um decision was reached is important and also um i'm black in here michael why should we use uh open channels or our public chat more than private channels to record things is a good thing and but also if things get a url so you can link to them from other contexts as well and i i think context is is something that we've been talking a lot about lately and it we we've just now been talking about decisions and and making sure that the decisions are out in the open but it's not especially as a remote globally distributed team it's often not the decisions that are the most important part it's the context because it means that you don't have to wait for someone else to make that decision because you can see you can see what led to the decision you can make more decisions yourself you can be more autonomous yourself because you can see what what went into you know making that decision i don't have to double check that i'm going in the right direction because i can see it right and you know having mountains and mountains of context is also a problem um you've got to try and uh make sure that the communication is high quality but um but you know that's an ongoing battle as any organization grows and it's it's something that you know i'm kind of looking forward to as we as we grow is to to continue to think about how we manage that too much information this is not enough information but um the the being able to make people autonomous and be able to be making their own decisions and things is is i think one of the really most empowering things about having the information out there something i really appreciate is um not just the making decisions but when people ask questions in public as well it's really easy to default to like oh i don't know this thing and so i should just go ask privately because you know i don't want anyone to think i'm ignorant um but it's so helpful um and i i always try to do that as much as possible because there have been so many times where i you know i i try to read the back scroll in slack when i come on in the morning and i i have been able to solve and troubleshoot so many problems from reading like remembering oh yeah a couple of days ago i saw carl help someone else out with this and it might be the same problem and it's it's really it goes a long way i think to like you said empowering people to find the information that they need to get unstuck or um to to have the context that they need to ask better questions when you can see the questions that people have already asked so that's another thing i think i've i've seen happening a lot that i really appreciate lately having that having the safety yeah that you can be vulnerable um by not knowing things is something that that would definitely been thinking a lot about and modeling dyson i'm definitely model not knowing things and asking questions me too i mean i'm talking about me that's what i'm pointing out but taku is pretty uh in a good way he's pretty uh laissez-faire about not knowing things and asking what's it yeah yeah so so i like to do the jeff bezos thing where it's like question mark you know what is this about um all right we're you know we're gonna run out of time let's talk about applying to ptix and you should be interested in ptix um maybe okay if you're a potential if you're somebody who's looking at this and uh wondering you know should i or should i not apply like what would you say what are some of the interesting things that they might be able to do once they join you so on my screen michael's off to the left and he's just pointing thin air but michael yeah me too um what are some of the interesting things so uh we're going through a lot of foundational change at the moment um from a technical point of view um we're a pearl shop um and so ptx is a pearl monolith um and pearl is it's extremely well written pearl well-tested i've come you know from github the last major job and that's the rails application and in a lot of ways the the pearl monolith looks a lot like you know rails applications using catalysts frame web framework and um you know very understandable a lot of it looks like you don't have to experience about it michael just tell us what you really it's good and that no no i i really do think it's a really good pearl um however pearl is uh is let's say it's sun setting or no it's uh you know we have new services springing up and the first thing they're going to support is not perl and so we've found that a lot of our time is spent on maintaining abandoned pearl libraries that other people let go or pearl infrastructure that other people have let go or or implementing bridges in pearl to to communicate with other services that we want to use um right and and that that's it's overhead that we don't need um and and isn't isn't productive work it's not helping out our um our users our customers um so uh transitioning off that is going to be one of the big things that uh that we're working on at the moment we're moving towards node.js um and being very mindful that that a wholesale rewrite of any system is a fraught dangerous thing so we're doing that over quite quite a few years where we'll have a new system as a proxy in front of the pearl monolith and slowly replace routes within the application um and also moving towards an api first model where the front end the web front end and the native apps all communicate over the same apis so where we're uh consolidating our business logic and and um trying to not repeat ourselves in in different contexts um we're also going through quite a lot of change in terms of our infrastructure and moving from [Music] individually managed ec2 instances to infrastructure as code so there's lots of changes in in terms of the lower levels as well um if you aware of ptx then you know we're focusing on events and community so that's a fun thing to get involved with as well um but back on actually finally back on technical side this year one of our main focuses is um better and and this actually goes back to something sparks was saying earlier about waiting until later in the day to deploy because there'll be other people around we don't want that to be a thing like what we want to happen is that people are really confident in their abilities to push out code and know what's happening with that code in production so that's a real focus this year is how can we help developers understand what's going to happen when their code goes to production understand um you know what the impact specifically of the the changes that they've made um and be confident about that roll out so you know things like canary deploys and and we already do um some pretty mature deployment stuff around branch deploys things like that so it's just building on that that sort of stuff to make the developers lives better right and and that of course that of course leads to you know better code happy developers better code better understanding of what's happening in production sure so you talked a lot about the back end maybe infrastructure a bit sparks why would other fellow front-end developers why should they be interested in pdx on the front end where you know making a similar transition we're we're starting right now to um take some features that need a lot of um you know reconsideration because they were written initially a long time ago and we've just been maintaining them so we're starting to look at rewriting those um in a more um sort of modern better supported framework um and so that's really exciting um to get to get in on the ground floor of that and um and be a part of making decisions that i think are going to be really foundational but also as a part of that we don't we don't have a lot of designers on the team at the moment so we're really um excited about having some people who are you know passionate about design both visually and user experience oriented that's something that um you know i really love thinking about but is you know from a technical design side um i think it's it's something that's really important and needs a dedicated eye so um you know uh that that type of thing really thinking about how to make the experience of using ptix um like a just a super pleasant thing to do and that people will want to come and build their communities that's i think a big part of what we're going to be doing on on the front end um is yeah making it making everything smooth and seamless and fast and beautiful pleasantries yep um dicey want to talk about the process um what does the process look like if you apply uh just an interesting state where uh i think over 80 percent of our business is actually in japan right now even though today it'll be different it'll be different whereas 80 percent of our engineering team or a product engineering team is outside of japan like um you talked about working in this kind of environment where there's a lot of japanese activity um oh this is a heart maybe this is a really difficult question but like what do you think your role is in like getting pticks to kind of become more global are you asking me i'm asking all of you so we maybe we we might have started off in japan 10 years ago but my goal has always been to become a truly global international company so that people don't even know that we started out in japan um and uh we want to expand the business okay as a market right now yes 80 of our business is japan but in five years wanting to be very different um perhaps japan the japan portion be the small being the smallest would be a nice composition to go after and the the team composition will need to reflect that and uh well the product engineer team is uh certainly several steps ahead in that direction so i'm really really excited about this really happy with the way the team has been built so far and we need to continue down that road and we want people from all walks of life from different locations and different backgrounds and it just makes i like i really you know figuratively but i skip into work every day because it's just so much fun talking to people sparks you were you know you were at one point um can we are we able to disclose this but you were you were at a circus right you were performing in a circus at some point oh yeah yeah that was uh a whole other whole other lifetime ago right wonderful stories and i really enjoy working together with with you and everybody at p6x i'm not sure if i'm asking your question guys but so that's from tucker's perspective and taco really wants to make this thing go global and now you all came to this company that you probably only heard of because you know i was involved in it when i when you when i asked you all to join but what's it like or or what was the trepidation like and how has your how has that been kind of soothed and how do you see us how how would you like to see us move forward i'll start with michael because he looks confused and then he's going to answer yes do i make up an answer to a question i don't understand that that's that's the you know what i mean like first of all this is a japanese company he said that a number of times but yeah it's clear that he thinks of ptx as a global company yeah yeah and and and we're certainly moving towards being a global company and and taku talked about the importance of of people coming from a variety of different backgrounds and that diversity is going to be one of the most important things to global success and and success can be measured on all sorts of different in all sorts of different ways um and i think from a product engineering point of view our one of our measures of success is how different we all are from each other and i think we're we are moving more in in the direction of people being different i think the most interesting people uh to bring into the team uh people with you know crazy different backgrounds um and uh i think people with different backgrounds bring you know a curiosity and and interest and insight that we you can't get by you know hiring you know the same person 27 times um and i did say that we've hired a lot of people from github and uh so we do hire from our networks and that's a very powerful way to hire but we've also got to be really mindful of that because if you hire too much from your networks and you hire you tend to hire people who are like yourself um and so it is also really valuable to do things like this and hopefully get ourselves out to an you know a different audience a different group of people and um and bring in people who are going to bring different perspectives to us that diversity is is going to be super important to our success and lots of dimensions of diversity um so yeah yeah i would agree with that i think that um that is uh definitely building a diverse team and different perspectives is is a big part of making sure that we're building a product that's going to appeal to all sorts of people and um one of the things uh along those lines um diversity on in many different dimensions that um i think is really exciting about um the the work that we're doing in front end right now that i forgot to mention um is um the opportunity to really take another look at accessibility and making sure that we're doing a great job there as we rebuild parts of the front end and so that's um i think an angle that um we could you know maybe use some more perspectives on on our team but that's also um you know a really huge global audience of people who you know do want to participate in events and do want to plan and organize and and do things um who might not use uh websites in a way that the typical developer or a product engineer thinks of um so having you know some some new perspectives on that i think would be really valuable to kind of open things up to an even even bigger audience and even bigger opportunities great point so we don't care if you're in south america mongolia prince edward island we don't care where you are if you if you want to work for a tight-knit global very interesting company working on great things um and you know we're not working on ball bearings or something we're working at community it's it's it's really um what we're doing i feel contributes to society in a very positive manner so if you're interested so here about.ptix.com um about yeah we'll we'll get the url down here and maybe some email addresses so if you have any questions please feel free to contact us and uh if not an official application if you're just wondering uh should i or should i not uh it's okay that's fine we we just want to get in touch with you and and talk with you so urls email addresses because we're editing this later we'll be added here uh feel free to contact us and have a have a chat with us by all means um i think we've run out of time it was great talking to you to you all um and uh we'll do more of these right nice i believe so yeah no yes definitely there's so many interesting people here so many interesting people so many different themes uh and uh hope to make this a series so so that um well what is ptx product engineering or what are we building and who are we building these things with uh get to we want to get this um out there and so thank you both uh especially sparks what what time is it in nova scotia oh it's it's just 9 p.m now um 9 p.m not too late okay but thank you oh thank thank you for having me this has been a really fun great conversation and it's great to see some faces and michael thank you as well pleasure it's fun definitely and uh dice let's get back to work on this awesome thank you very much have a wonderful evening and a wonderful day great see ya bye stop recording great and that's going to magically appear in that

2022-02-17 10:25

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