Formosa Financial Meet the Team #1
John Chen: Front-End Engineer
Welcome to a new content series in which we interview members of Formosa Financial to give you some insight into the people that make up our team and what they’re working on.
First up, meet our Front-End Engineer John Chen!
John Chen
Libra, Type O
Interests: Triathlon, mountain climbing, listening to music (Chinese pop music)
Hobbies: Pets (cats and dogs), tea tasting (spring tea)
Favorite movie: Training Day
John has over 6 years of front-end development experience and 5 years of experience in image processing multimedia programming, leading projects at top server vendors QNAP and Everfocus. He has also participated in the development of various projects such as Cinema28, IPMI, HappyGet, OBM DVR Web UI, ODM DVR Web UI, and is part of the Tech Team at Formosa Financial.
Q: What made you want to be an engineer?
A: Ever since I was a child I’ve been very interested in information technology. That interest continued throughout my life as I majored in Computer Science and Information Engineering for both my bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
Writing programs and watching things operate according to the algorithms I’ve written gives me a great sense of accomplishment.
Q: What programming language do you know? what is your favorite?
A: Since I’ve studied and worked with information technology for most of my life, I know many languages like C++, C#, Python, Delphi, Javascript.HTML, CSS, React.js and many more. My favorite is React.js because it’s a really user-friendly Javascript framework with a methodology that not only makes making development easier but also code tracing and debugging.
Q: What brought you to a blockchain and a project like Formosa Financial
A: Blockchain and cryptocurrency have been very hot topics in the last few years and it first struck my interest when about two years ago a few of my engineering friends were discussing bitcoin at lunch.
After doing my own research, I also became interested in bitcoin, but more about the tech behind it. I found that blockchain is a fairly new industry in Taiwan, and the idea of participating in a new field was a very exciting career move.
So I did some research on the existing blockchain projects and companies based in Taiwan and found Formosa Financial to be a very innovative project.
The platform aims to solve the market needs that other blockchain projects face every day so I saw a chance to contribute to the project and sent in an application.
In the end, I was very honored to join the team and have the opportunity to help build this platform from zero to one!
Q: What have you been building at Formosa Financial?
A: Since the first day I came on-board, I’ve been writing and developing Formosa Financial’s MVP (Minimum Viable Product).
The first thing I worked on was to connect and make the API work with basic frameworks. After about two weeks of work, I further connected all the wireframes our designer Ron gave us and wrote all the APIs to get the MVP complete and ready for the staging. In addition to the significant improvement in my English, I’ve also learned a lot of the backend tech of blockchain, including how Bitcoin and Ethereum work, etc.
Q: What insights could you share about the Formosa Financial platform that you’re building from 0 to 1?
A: Formosa Financial has the Jedi master of blockchain Lorne Lantz and an extraordinary UI/UX Designer. So I’ve learned a ton from both of them about blockchain and design. Combined with my past experiences, I think we have great team chemistry and efficiency.
Q: What is the biggest challenge to you during developing Formosa Financial’s platform?
A:The biggest challenge was that the upcoming platform needs to be detail designed and the user’s behavior is thoroughly considered at every stage. At the beginning of the front-end development, the framework and structure had to be formulated and that took some time and a lot of thought.
Q: What do you like the most about Formosa Financial and the working environment?
A: The easy going yet productive work environment! The team is supportive in providing what we need, and I love the snacks, my personal favorite is Kinder Bueno! Supervisors and team members are all easy-going, patient and have a sense of humor, something not commonly found in traditional Taiwanese companies.
The thing I like the most about Formosa Financial is the spirit of freedom and trust; they encourage us to be very hands on in the discussion, planning and implementation process.
Q: As an engineer of Formosa Financial, what do you want to achieve?
A: I would like to keep doing research on the core technology of blockchain and increase my knowledge base in blockchain and fintech to continue to build useful products and applications.
