Talk to us about your tech stack.
We make it a priority to always use the latest tech. For instance, we won’t use something that will be useless in a few years.
Elixir/Phoenix is our go-to choice for all new projects. Modern web applications demand both real time communication with end users (i.e. chat, live updates, notifications, etc) and background processing (i.e. transaction handling, reporting, external integrations, etc). Elixir’s use of the Erlang VM brings a great multi-process model to these challenges. We do still use Ruby on Rails, as well, primarily for legacy apps and in some cases for new apps where Elixir doesn’t present a clear advantage over Rails.
We use React and React Native for web and mobile app development, respectively. React Native lets us develop Android and iOS apps that look and feel native but that share a codebase, making the build faster, more efficient and easier to maintain.
What are some internal or client projects that you’re proud of?
We worked with OrderUp, a national food ordering company, to build an internal menu builder tool (which cut data entry time in half) and an Android app. Not long after, OrderUp was acquired by Groupon.
We’re proud of our work for Spotcrime, a crime data aggregator that has been a client since 2008. Most recently, we built an infrastructure that enabled the app to handle a large volume of data for much lower costs. It is visited by one million users a month and sends over five million email alerts a month.
We’ve even built software that ran on the International Space Station.
What do you look for in new hires?
We make very strategic hiring decisions. We’re looking for devs who are solid technical talents — people who understand software to their core and computer science from an applied perspective. We look for people who are deeply interested in programming; for them it’s more than a job, they read about it in their spare time.
We look for people who are smart, capable, truly interested in the work and excited to come in every day.
Our team is very self-directed. We’re not going to micromanage you here. So we seek people who are self-managing and very independent.
Tell us about your internal culture.
Our processes are well thought-out and streamlined. Never wanting to become stagnant with old tech, we make a concerted effort to keep up with the modern tech landscape. The people on our team have a variety of skill sets and we value that.
In terms of career growth, we encourage you to pursue things that you’re interested in learning or trying out. We keep the lines of communication open so that team members can discuss their interests, find a way to explore new ideas, learn tech stacks in between client projects, etc.
Many folks here have their own side projects so we have a side project club that meets once a month, where employees can update the team on what they’re building.
What are your company values?
● Be trustworthy — We want happy, repeat clients, and that happens when they know we have their best interests in mind.
● Collaboration and Communication — We’re very collaborative and transparent; our clients own the accounts we create for them, and they invite us to access their accounts. There aren’t any non-technical PMs sitting between us and our clients. The devs communicate with them directly.
● Be pragmatic and intentional — We don’t wing it here. We come prepared and use time judiciously.
Do you have any special company and/or community traditions?
Pre-pandemic, we would host a company lunch once a week. These days we still host weekly meetings featuring presentations online. And to bond for an hour or so, we’ve hosted a few virtual happy hours where the company picks up the tab for the team’s dinner.
As part of growth and development, we send everyone to one to two conferences a year. This year we attended and sponsored ElixirConf remotely, as well as attended the React Native EU Conference remotely.
One of the things we’re most proud of is our effort to sponsor and produce grassroot events. In 2019 alone we sponsored 56 events. We’ve been a longtime sponsor and supporter of Technical.ly’s events. We program and host on our own lineup of Meetups, including the Baltimore Elixir Meetup. And, we also recently gave away $13,000 to Black-led organizations in Baltimore and D.C.