The Story of a Family Man in a Fast-paced Engineering Team
Written by Neal Shivakumar
Endru’s morning starts with family time. Before he starts his 25-kilometer commute through the bustling city of Jakarta, he usually plays with his son while waiting for his wife’s homemade breakfast. After breakfast is ready, he feeds and showers his son and then kisses his family on the forehead before heading to the office. This may sound like an ordinary day in the life of a very caring family man, but this man is no ordinary man. After getting a degree in Electrical & Electronic Engineering from Nanyang Technological University, one of the best technical universities in the world, he continued on to work in the electronic engineering field where his team wrote a paper about “A wirelessly powered and interrogated blood flow monitoring microsystem fully integrated with a prosthetic vascular graft for early failure detection”. He went on to develop telematics solution for Aviation industry, lead the Mobile Team at Ralali.com, and currently he is leading a world-class Android Engineering Team at Kargo Technologies.
His “ordinary” engineering work
At Kargo, everyone knows Endru for his cheerful presence and his contagious smile. He keeps conversation light as he talks with fellow engineers throughout the day. Always bringing a calming but confident attitude towards any work-related issue. Endru tells me that being a family man is what keeps him productive during his office hours. “After office hours I need to spare my time for my family. So If there is extra work, I have to do it either on the bus or after they’re asleep.”
Talking with Endru is always refreshing and exciting. Endru is very bright, capable and smart, yet very friendly and down to earth. He has over 10 years of experience in software and hardware engineering. And in this time, he has specialized in many areas: mobile application development, PC software development, embedded software development, IC design, PCB design, and circuit testing. For mobile application development, he has exposure in three kinds of mobile platforms: Android, iOS, and Windows.
As a part of non-engineering team in Kargo, I was curious about how the Engineering team operated at Kargo and Endru was able to break it down for me in a simple way. The engineering team at Kargo is divided into squads. There are driver, shipper, and transporter experience squad in the Marketplace room. In the other room, there are payment squad who works on the escrow product and infrastructure squad who works on the cloud and server used by the app. The Android Team that Endru is leading is part of driver, shipper and transporter experience squad within the Marketplace and Commercial business. That being said, software development was not something he’d have imagined himself doing earlier in life. “I wasn’t really exposed to programming as a kid, I didn’t really know what it was. Initially, I was interested in hardware things and I even dreamed about inventing amazing things like Thomas Edison. This is the reason I chose electrical and electronic engineering as my major. But in my university years, while majoring in electrical and electronic (engineering), I started to find programming very interesting.” His newfound interest led him to minor in Computing while at university.
After graduating, he worked on hardware and designed analog signal IC chips. He was working on USB 3.0 project, which in 2009 was very new. His next job was with the Institute of Microelectronics, where he served as a research engineer. It was at this time that he started his magical journey as a professional software engineer. Reflecting on his early years, he laughs and says that his programming wasn’t very good at the time. However, Endru has spent the past 10 years focused on developing software and improving his skills, including leading the Mobile Team at Ralali.com.
There are many problems that arise daily for engineers. As I talked with Endru he shared how many of the problems they face are solved through effective collaboration. At Kargo, we report to each other on everything we do. Be it what we did yesterday, what we are going to do today, or things like exploiting the blockers during our stream. “If we have any problems we communicate very directly with each other, we have a very good culture of openness.”
I spoke with Endru further about the collaboration process at Kargo. He told me how we use good tech tools to help us. For task management, we use Jira. During the planning and development process, we utilize Jira to divide up the tasks and everyone involved can see the status (whether it’s in progress, in review or done). Another method which he thinks is very important is RFCs (request for comments). RFCs help engineers when they start projects. Everyone in the company can give feedback which can then be implemented.
Besides tech tools, Endru loves how the quality of discussion helps to collaborate. He said that everyone in the engineering team is very skilled at having discussions. If something is important, they just meet in person to sort it out.
Android software development in Kargo
Software is Endru’s top priority as an Android Developer. In his words, “Kargo is built on tech so software is our main focus. In order for Kargo to grow, we need to be supported by good technology. Currently, we’re making good progress and our software quality is very good.” Kargo is a young company and all of our products were built from scratch. Currently, there are still many ways we could improve. Endru believes that through building products, improving the process efficiency, and automating things, we can improve the overall quality.
Endru shared how the development process in the Android team is unique. “We are doing our development process using TDD (Test Driven Development) and DDD (Domain Driven Design).” Endru heavily stresses this as one of the main reasons top engineers should want to come to Kargo. This process gives Kargo an edge in the industry. He also has strong faith in the company for another reason, the people. “Everyone is extremely friendly, it’s very enjoyable to work here. The management supports us with all our projects and encourages us to use the best practices.”
I asked him about Kargo’s magnet that will draw top engineers and he emphasized how at Kargo, you can use the best practice you could come up with. We also have a great office to work in and wonderful environment. We are building something really great that will solve the biggest problems in the logistics industry and the work we are doing is impacting many lives in a big way.
After spending the morning with Endru in the engineering room I had one last question. What is the most rewarding part of your job? His answer was simple. He smiled and said, “I think the most rewarding feeling for me is when our app gets a 5-star review on the google play store.”
The amount of work Endru puts in makes something as small as that lead to a powerful feeling of accomplishment. This feeling motivates his team to work even harder. The fact that their work is helping solve one of the countries hardest problems only adds to this. As a family man, he tries his best not to touch any work related stuff while spending time with his family. That’s why late at night, you can find Endru working with his computer while his family is fast asleep. Balancing work and family is one of the biggest modern dilemmas. Endru has managed to pull this off, and he makes it look easy.
