Understanding Client Requirements: An Essentry Q and A

Table of Contents

1. Understanding Client Requirements: An Essentry Q and A
2. Why did you choose to work at such a small startup?
3. What are the most recurring tasks in your daily job as an engineer?
4. What's the most worthwhile investment you have ever made?
5. What is an absurd habit that you have?
6. What habit has improved your life the most in the last couple of years?
7. What's the first thing you do when you wake up at six?
8. Do you do some exercising during the day?
9. What type of activities would you expect to do with the new colleague apart from working?
10. What are some of the things you would expect a new C# engineer to master?
11. What is a bad engineering habit that you usually hear?
12. What's the most difficult task at your current job?
13. For the new C sharp developer who is going to be working also with the dotnet framework, what do you expect him to bring?
14. What is a failure or an apparent failure that set you up better for later success?
15. What is an unusual or absurd thing that you love to do?
16. When you're overwhelmed or unfocused, how do you tackle that?
17. What type of outdoor or after-work activities would you like to undertake with the new colleague
18. In Conclusion

Understanding Client Requirements: An Essentry Q and A

Essentry is a great startup in Berlin. They are building and creating smart technology for real estate. So they are disrupting the real estate industry in a good way.

They are also working in an amazing campus, which is called Factory Berlin. That's where our company is based. And the factory building is a campus that has a lot of engineers, freelancers, entrepreneurs, and companies that are based in it.

This is Christian. He's a security engineer was worked on Ruby and is currently developing, mostly using Node.js. He is a full-stack developer. And I have a couple of questions so that we just get to know you better.

Why did you choose to work at such a small startup?

Yeah, I think compared to bigger companies, everybody has a lot of responsibility. And, and also impact, right? Like, everybody, can decide what what what approach they will take. And also everything fails or succeeds, based on every what every person is doing, compared to a to, like a big corporate where everybody is just like a small wheel and, and cannot really decide anything, and it's just executing. And to everybody has a lot of ownership and also responsibility.

What are the most recurring tasks in your daily job as an engineer?

So, we are right now onboarding more and more customers and we have this product that we think should cover a very wide range of processes. But like customers always have like a different, you have different wishes, different processes. And I think we are like trying to adapt our product and our workflows to new customers and try to make it still like standardized, but also customizable and adaptable. I think this is the most recurring thing.

What's the most worthwhile investment you have ever made? (personal question)

Yeah, I think when I was 16, I was an exchange student in Texas. And this was, at the time a very big decision for me, but I think has influenced my life the most up until now.

What is an absurd habit that you have? (personal question)

Yeah, I like skydiving. I do this regularly during the summer.

What habit has improved your life the most in the last couple of years? (personal question)

A couple of months ago, I started to get up at 6 am. And so you like naturally, more like, I was staying up later and waking up later. And I started to wake up at 6 am. And this has improved a lot how I structure my day, and what I get done.

What's the first thing you do when you wake up at six? (personal question)

I try to start working immediately like I make a coffee, and then I start working. And then by the time, it's nine, or 10 am, I have already done like the most important things.

Do you do some exercising during the day? Or how often do you do that per week? (personal question)

I go to CrossFit once or twice a week, when I have the time.

What are some of the things you would expect a new C# engineer to master?

We have this, this kiosk which is written in C#, and we don't have like a lot of C# experience in-house yet, because we all come from different directions. And we are looking for someone who can own this topic, work on it, and also consult us, a bit like what project we should take as a team also to improve the kiosk. So also someone who has a lot of ownership and responsibility as well.

What type of activities would you expect to do with the new colleague apart from working?

Could be like grabbing a drink afterward, for example. We have also like one activity we have done before, like once a year, twice a year, where we go to an exit game, like those rooms where you get locked in as a team and then you have to break out in like an hour. Yes, it is pretty interesting that team-wise, we get to work on something else together. And it's also a lot of fun.

What is a bad engineering habit that you usually hear?

I would say it is like, sometimes there are like some strong opinions like thrown around. And I think a lot of them are more like a trade-off decision. Right. So for example, like ‘never deploy on a Friday evening’, which is like good advice for a lot of companies and for us, maybe not so much.

Thank you very much Christian for your time. I hope we find somebody great that supplements your team and make your company and the technologies you are building much better. Thank you. Thanks, again, thank you.

Wasili is a pretty talented engineer is worked previously with Android and using Java as a programming language and is currently concentrated on developing new applications with React js and React Native.

What's the most difficult task at your current job?

For me at the moment, it has to be the dot net framework. As you said before, I started off as a Java developer for the Android platform. Then I switch over to React, writing TypeScript, and now dotnet. It's in a way similar to Java, if you write it in C Sharp, but it's still like the whole Microsoft ecosystem is just way different. So this is also why we are searching for someone new. And this should hopefully be resolved in the future.

For the new C sharp developer who is going to be working also with the dotnet framework, what do you expect him to bring?

As mentioned before, the most important thing is, we need someone who's self-driven, who's motivated, who can work in an environment where we are just a few people. So this would be like the major requirement. They have to be part of the team, they have to believe in the same things that we believe in, and try to achieve the same goal.

After that, obviously, they have to write good code, they have to write structured code. They have to be able to maintain that code, change it based on the next steps. And so just to give an outlook of what we are doing, we are working with lots of external hardware. So you have to be able to talk to 3D cameras to verify people or use a car dispenser to distribute different types of key cards. So stuff like that will be of big importance.

What is a failure or an apparent failure that set you up better for later success?

So there will be definitely some smaller things. But one bigger issue that we had about two years ago was the talk about switching from native Android apps and native iOS apps towards React Native. Back then it was still an up-and-coming technology and I was a bit or I was against that, or I was skeptical about it at least. But after trying that, and after especially working with it for a longer period of time, it turned out to be a great technology to use.

What is an unusual or absurd thing that you love to do? (personal question)

My everyday setup is I work on the MacBook. So I really like using Mac OS. But for my phone, I use Android, which at least a few people find very strange. But for me, it just works great. I love both platforms.

When you're overwhelmed or unfocused, how do you tackle that?

It’s a structure thing. So if like sometimes if you have all those different inputs that we get here, you need to bring in some structure. And for me, it helps to just really again, write down all the things I have to do on post-its and then go through them one by one and just take them off. And by the end of the day, I'll see what I achieved and what has to be done, and which stuff I have to carry over to the next day.

What type of outdoor or after-work activities would you like to undertake with the new colleague who will be joining the team? The new C sharp developer?

Well, obviously if they are into some sports that would help. What we also do is we go to some restaurants or some pubs.

In Conclusion

As you have seen, we like to understand both professional and some personal aspects about the position we are supposed to fill. It is the only way we can make sure that we get candidates that will help build team harmony. 'After-work' things help teams bons and as a result even build better products.