From intern to owner of our Android app—in one month.

Yesterday we announced the release of Gumroad Library for Android — it’s our first Android app and we’re all excited. Even more exciting for me is knowing the story behind how the app was created. I think it speaks to the unique culture we’ve built here, which Sahil has spoken about in the past.

Autonomy is crucial around here; it’s something we select for and expect from every member of the team including the summer engineering interns. Everyone is encouraged to make big product and technical decisions and to choose which projects most resonate with them. Last summer a remarkably talented intern named Greg Terrono came to work with us. I’ve worked with many interns in the past and I know that it’s rare for someone to ramp up as quickly as he did. He’s smart and at the same time hungry to learn more and do more. He’s also always looking for the right way to do things instead of just getting them done. These are all great qualities that are a sign of an amazing engineer in the making.

We expect our interns to showcase one or two big projects that they owned and shipped during their internship — we don’t want them just working on small features and bug fixes. Greg powered through his first product and shipped early, within just a month of his start date. We gave him the option to work on “whatever else you think Gumroad needs that you’re passionate about building.” Greg jumped on Android right away. We had just shipped our first iOS app and he wanted Android users to have an experience that was at parity. It was a huge product that we’d planned to prioritize in the future after building out our mobile team a bit more. But Greg was excited about it.

So that begged the question — do we walk the walk of our autonomous and flat org structure and let our engineering intern lead such a big product?

It was an easy decision to make. We gave Greg the project and also an offer to join us full-time once he completes his CS degree at UPenn. Greg’s grit and talent, coupled with his passion for drastically leveling up his Android production skills turned out to be a major recipe for success.

Greg’s exactly the kind of engineer who thrives at Gumroad. We look for people who want to be passionate about the product they’re working on. Engineers who:

• are self-motivated and self-policing in the absence of a manager, and prefer it that way
• care about their craft and want their teammates to feel the same way
• have a high tolerance for (some would argue horrible) puns
• want to expand their horizons and who’d rather not be pigeonholed into doing one or two types of work
• are okay with being uncomfortable from time to time, knowing that those are likely the times that one learns the most

And of course we’re hiring. You can reach me at amir@gumroad.com.