Meet Sam Grasse-Haroldsen

Software Engineer, Optimization Team, June 2021

What does your team do? What do you like or find interesting about your team?

The optimization team focuses on improving site performance, SEO, ad viewability, and the developer experience. One thing I like about the optimization team is the brainstorming sessions we have on improving various metrics. We are constantly exploring and discovering new ways to improve page load times.

One of our mottos is “get better everyday”. What is something that you got better at recently?

I recently paired up with a senior engineer who taught me how to more effectively use the Chrome devtools to debug our Node.js application.

What are you most proud of having accomplished at Insider?

I am most proud of leading the initiative to deprecate and remove jQuery from our client-side codebase. In the process, I learned a ton about jQuery, vanilla JavaScript, and how our site’s different components work together. There is still a significant amount of jQuery on the site, but it is a work in progress by many team members!

What is one thing you’d change in the tech industry?

I would love to see more companies rewarding open source software developers for all their great work!

If all animals were the same size, what animal do you think would win in a fight?

Mantis shrimp for sure!

What is something you could teach us in 5 minutes?

How to play a basic rock beat on the drums

If you could instantly master 3 skills, which would you choose?

Gardening, yoga, and communication!