Meet the Glovo team: Rey ☕ 🤖
This is a series of articles to celebrate the people behind Glovo, and get to know who they are and what they are doing.
Today we meet Duc Nguyen, who goes by the name of “Rey” because (believe me), Duc (actually written Đức) is harder to pronounce than it looks. Rey comes from Vietnam and joined Glovo 1 year ago.
Hello Rey, thank you for making some time for the interview. Could you tell us a bit about what you do at Glovo?
Sure. I work in the Dispatching team. Our goal is to increase the courier efficiency, which means we want them to be able to deliver more orders per hour.
I’m a backend engineer, so I work introducing new features, improving the optimization algorithm, helping deploy new machine learning models…
And what project is your team doing right now?
We are introducing bundling. The idea is that couriers can deliver multiple orders at the same time, so they can complete deliveries faster and earn more money.
It’s quite a big project because it involves a lot of changes across the system and coordinating with different teams.
You were working in Vietnam before, right? What made you decide to come to Europe?
I’d never thought about coming to Europe before. The truth is, when Glovo contacted me, I researched a bit and I found out it was a very young company growing fast and with people from all over the world. I thought it would be a great experience for me. It was a good chance that came at the right time.
How do you like Barcelona so far?
When I came here, it was a totally new world for me. Spring was beautiful, I really enjoyed it.
Were there any big culture shocks?
The meal time was a big one. Back in Vietnam, we have lunch at 12 and dinner at 7–8. When I arrived in Spain, I could not understand how people could have dinner at 10–11 PM, but after a few months, I’m having dinner at 10 PM as well :D.
Welcome to the dark side. How do you spend your free time?
I join a lot of meetups. I go to coffee meetups, wine meetups, trekking on the mountains… I also go running every Sunday, and I hang out with my friends.
Sometimes I even have the time to code!
Speaking about that. Do you have any side project you want to do?
I’d like to start my own blog. Actually, I would like to develop it from the ground up and take the chance to learn React. I feel I’m a bit behind in the latest frontend trends.
How is the Rey from today different than the Rey of 1 year ago?
I used to think I had good communication skills, but I realized that when you work with people from different backgrounds and cultures, it’s very important to be even more open and discuss your ideas constantly until you are on the same page.
Another thing I learned is to take more responsibility for what I’m doing. When we develop something, we need to think about it as our product, and be on top of it. That includes trying to understand why we need a change, discussing the best way to do it, and monitoring the effects it has when it goes to production.
What is the last book that changed the way you think?
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. It’s a self-help book by a famous author in the US. He criticizes how we always try to think about the bright side of things. He says there are some things that just suck. If you want to fix them, you cannot try to ignore how bad they are.
Interesting. I’ll add it to my wishlist. Ok, now let’s go for a quick round of questions. Are you ready? Tea or coffee?
Coffee.
Light mode or Dark mode?
Dark mode
Java or Python?
Java, for now. I know my way better in it.
Your favorite design principle
The Single Responsibility Principle. It makes things simpler, which helps in every other way.
Your favorite open source project
PostgreSQL. RDBMSs are one of my favorite technical topics.
Synchronous or asynchronous?
Asynchronous. It makes for better performance and it’s more interesting to work on.
Big companies or startups?
Startups. I like the journey and the constant challenges.
Thank you Rey for taking the time to do this small interview!
Are you looking for new challenges? Check out our open positions!
