Interview with Sophie Alpert

One of the women at the heart of React

Sophie went from submitting the first pull request on the React JS repo to engineering manager of React Core at Facebook. Now an engineering manager at Humu, in this interview she gives us her inside perspective on how React has evolved over the years. You can find her on Twitter as @sophiebits.

How long did you work on React?

I deployed my first UI using React to production within two weeks of React’s release — something that made sense to me at the time but sounds a little reckless in retrospect — which I believe makes me the first production user of React. Shortly after that I started contributing back to the codebase: at first, fixes to small bugs I had run into; later, larger features. I think I became the #1 committer to React while still an external contributor! I also spent time on other community efforts, like answering Stack Overflow questions in the days before there was much documentation. Eventually, I joined Facebook to work on React full-time (and eventually manage the team), where I stayed for about 4 years.

How has React changed over the years?

When React was used by only a few people (or few thousand), it was much easier to make breaking changes as we found things we wanted to update. Now that React is used by millions of developers who rely on it to be stable — and there’s an ecosystem of thousands of packages built around React — a change to React can have a major effect on people, and people are understandably nervous when there’s any hint of a change coming. It means that the React team needs to be more careful both when making changes and when talking about them to make things as smooth as possible. For example, with Hooks, we wanted to avoid scaring people with half-baked ideas, so preceding the announcement we were more secretive about our ideas than I would have otherwise liked.

What do you do now?

I’m working at a startup called Humu. We sell a product to HR departments that makes work better for people — specifically, by giving people small “nudges” to help make a work environment that’s more fulfilling, empowering, and inclusive. I love the people here (and we’re hiring!).

What do you like to do when you aren’t hacking?

I really like eating good food. And getting enough sleep.

What’s your workspace like?

I don’t really like sitting at a desk — so I think I’m the only person in the Humu office without a desk assigned! I spend most of the time sitting on a couch, and often next to me is my wonderful coworker Sophia. It’s basically ours now, so we’ve affectionately termed it the “Sopha” (sofa).

This interview appeared in a condensed format in the 2019 Women at the Heart of React Zine. It is part of a series of interviews with women who contribute to React Core and organize the React Community. Portrait by Xyra Brittney.

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