Capturing the feeling of “Hello World” forever

Yoshiori Shoji leads our engineering team at Launchable. He has a huge tech following in Japan and was recently was interviewed by findy-code.io (an engineering recruitment firm).

Yoshiori is extremely passionate about building a great engineering culture and continuously learning (which seems to be a theme in Launchable).

Here are a few of highlights from the interview.

On the challenge of jumping from a big company, big role to a smaller company

• Make sure that the problem is compelling. In Launchable’s case we’re trying to solve slow feedback cycles for developers. We’re doing this with AI powered test automation. The idea appeals to Yoshiori because he’s experienced slow test feedback many times in various roles.
• Make sure that the people you will work with are compelling: In Launchable’s case, Kohsuke has worked to democratize Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and DevOps with Jenkins. Yoshiori’s relationship with Kohsuke made joining Launchable very appealing.

On challenges in remote work (especially a time difference between US and Japan)

• Decision making process should be clear and transparent: Launchable uses the DACI framework for decision making that clearly articulates the decision, the makers, and contributors. This doesn’t let a fog form around decisions because decision making is written and transparent.
• A written culture everywhere bridges the gap between timezones: Launchable has a culture of written documents that leave a trail of thinking that can be easily understood by anyone in the company at any time.
• We limit the number of meetings at Launchable so that people aren’t inconvenienced who are working in different time zones.

On keeping the feeling of amazement from writing the first “Hello World” program forever

Picking new skills is the key to keep the feeling of awe and amazement that you got when you first learned to program. He talks about picking up new programming languages (he moved from Java → Ruby and back) and new disciplines (from engineering to engineering management) as a way to reinvent yourself.

You can read his full interview here. It’s written in Japanese, but can be easily translated when viewed within Google Chrome.