Meet Eric Saam
My Name is Eric Saam, VP of Engineering Delivery Operations. My teams include the Delivery Group (Creation, Delivery & Distribution), SRE, Test Engineering, and Data Engineering Teams. I have been in Digital Media for over 24 years and hope my experience can help others. I joined Insider 4 years ago (Dec 2018).
What does your team do? What do you like or find interesting about your team?
My teams tend to be behind the scene, building the systems that get our data where it needs to be as quick as possible and in the format that is needed. The Creation team builds the tools the editorial team uses to create the stories the write, the DaD team gets those stories where they need to be (website, syndication partners, international) so our audience can read our content. The test engineering team makes sure that our code is reliable and we can trust our releases, and the SRE team make sure it is all running. The Data team collects the metrics from all the various systems and allow everyone to measure and improve on all of it. The interesting thing among all the teams is that are all core / centralized teams in some respect even the feature teams act in a hybrid role also providing foundational services to the other teams to be able to delivery on their goals. The best part of the teams is the teamwork and desire to continuously improve, working together and sharing their knowledge to make everyone better.
One of our mottos is “get better everyday”. What is something that you got better at recently?
I recently took a course on Linkedin Learning on Strategic Thinking and currently part of a leadership training program to continue to get better and learn more about how to be an effective leader.
What are you most proud of having accomplished at Insider?
2 things come to mind, one of the first project I was involved with was the initial content api (CAPV1) and the work the DaD team did to make that application reliable and performant, which has proven to become a foundational part of the tech stack we rely on everyday. I am also proud of all the growth we have had at Insider as we scale our teams to be able to tackle even more interesting and challenging work, from our partnership with Truelogic to growing and rebuilding teams like Data, Creation, SRE, I am proud of all the smart people we have added to make us stronger.
What is one thing you’d change in the tech industry?
The complexity, and speciality areas of tech can be overwhelming, it is difficult to stay current, which also creates a barrier for entry for someone new to the space. I would love to see ways to remove those barriers. Everyone would benefit from more diversity. Finding ways to create more opportunities for more people to be able to contribute to what they are passionate about in tech, would benefit the tech industry overall.
If all animals were the same size, what animal do you think would win in a fight?
Ant
What is something you could teach us in 5 minutes?
Basketball: How to shoot a basket/free throw?
Where would you find yourself five days after the start of the zombie apocalypse?
A Lighthouse on an Island
What would the title of your autobiography be?
Measure and Repeat
If you could instantly master 3 skills, which would you choose?
Mountain Biking, Statistics, Having some Musical Talent (Piano/Guitar)
