Getting to know Michael Green, Backend Developer
Interviews with the people building AMBOSS
How did you end up at AMBOSS?
AMBOSS was the first company I worked for after moving from London to Berlin. Having wanted to live in Berlin for a while, I found them online and really liked the look of the product and their mission to make medical students’ and doctors’ lives easier.
After I contacted them, they brought me to Berlin for an interview and I ended up joining.
What has surprised you the most since joining AMBOSS?
Having only worked at very small startups before AMBOSS, I think the most surprising thing was how easy it still is to build and deploy significant things quickly that really feel like they’re having an impact.
I expected that at a company this size things would be very tied down with slow processes and it would be much harder to feel like you’re making a difference — but that wasn’t the case.
It’s the perfect mix of a smaller company where you can make an impact, and a larger company that has great infrastructure to make building things fast and enjoyable.
What has been your favorite project at AMBOSS so far?
Probably building an API gateway for our GraphQL APIs. I was able to learn Go with an interesting project, and see the whole lifecycle of a micro-service from the very start, all the way to gradually rolling it out to all our users.
What’s the biggest challenge you’ve encountered in your role?
I think alongside the good parts about the company’s size, there are also some difficulties that aren’t there in smaller companies.
Making sure the changes and decisions you make don’t negatively affect other teams’ work can be quite challenging, especially during the pandemic when everything was remote. Socializing and sharing information with other teams was much more difficult.
Outside of the scope of your day to day work, what’s something else you’ve gotten involved in at AMBOSS?
AMBOSS puts on a lot of great social events. Before the pandemic there were regular drinks nights every two weeks. There are also BBQs in parks when the weather is nice, or on the office balcony.
What’s your favorite thing about working on your team?
At AMBOSS I really like the fact that it is such a great mix of cultures and backgrounds. There’s someone from almost every country you can think of, and there’s always something new to learn in every conversation you have.
Berlin in general is great for this, and I think AMBOSS really embodies that feeling.
