Having an Impact, Working with the Best and Making Marketers’ Jobs Easier: Why Andrew Okoh is #BlueToTheCore
At Bluecore, we put our people front and center in everything we do. To better understand what makes our diverse team tick and really get to know the individuals that make up our people machine, we decided to find out why different Bluecorians are #BlueToTheCore.
Today’s interview is with Andrew Okoh, Senior Software Engineer. Andrew first joined Bluecore in January 2014. He speaks Russian and can do a backflip.
TS: Tell me about the path that led you to Bluecore.
AO: I love solving problems and majored in computer science, so working at a tech company was a natural step for me. A friend of mine interviewed at Bluecore, but he accepted an offer from another company before he finished the Bluecore interview process. He told me he was disappointed he couldn’t explore the Bluecore opportunity further, and that really stuck with me. So when Bluecore’s CEO wrote to me directly, I decided to give it a shot. From my initial interviews, I realized I could learn a lot from the leadership team. I was impressed with their energy, can-do spirit and the fact I was even meeting them. At most companies, you don’t get facetime with the founders during the interview process, but that wasn’t my experience with Bluecore at all.
TS: What does your typical day at work look like?
AO: No days are typical here. My day could go from planning a big project to answering client related questions to whiteboarding to playing Go after lunch with my co-workers. As a tech lead, I manage projects from an end-to-end perspective and I’m responsible for the quality of output of my team (including code reviews, design reviews and more).
Whatever my day looks like, I try to block time to identify and help solve problems my team is having, sync and collaborate with other managers and focus on code. Of course no day would be complete without lunch, where I typically get to have exciting conversations in the engineering lounge around anything from politics to AI to genetic engineering.
TS: What differentiates Bluecore from other high growth companies?
AO: The people and leadership make sure we don’t water down our awesome culture. You can see that reflected in the things that we do. Everyone here is high caliber but they don’t take themselves too seriously and are open to feedback. I think one of the most unique things about Bluecore is how accessible our leaders make themselves.
TS: Which Bluecore value do you most represent?
AO: Bias for execution and ideas trump titles. At Bluecore, it’s about being solutions focused and having an impact. If something goes wrong, we don’t look for blame and do whatever it takes to get there.
TS: How well do we walk the walk when we say product and customer first?
AO: We definitely walk the walk. For example, even though my team is not customer facing engineers, we still build solutions that will make our customers lives better, even if that means it’s not what’s easiest for us. The engineers here are always focused on user experience.
TS: If you could switch jobs with anyone, who would it be?
AO: Mahmoud, our CTO. I would love to be the arbiter of our technical future!
TS: What about Bluecore do you value the most?
AO: The people and the learning — Bluecore has given me a lot of room to grow by trusting me with ownership of large initiatives. I love that Bluecore doesn’t put you in a box based on your title. Because of that, it’s been a great learning experience for me.
TS: What are you most looking forward to accomplishing this year?
AO: To break more of our campaign execution pipeline into microservices, because doing so will lead to a system that is better decoupled, making it easier to scale the engineering team. It would mean each squad could iterate on their respective components without needing to worry much about the internals of the rest of the system and it should reduce ramp up time for new engineers.
TS: What are you most proud of, either personally or professionally?
AO: Leading a team that built a layer of abstraction to expedite the time it takes to add new integrations with Email Service Providers and other vendors, such as Facebook and Adwords. This enabled us to expand our collection of integrations by about 12 within the last year. For Email Service Providers, we were able to reduce the build time for a new integration from three months to two weeks. I was delighted at the positive impact on the business and engineering toil.
TS: What keeps you at Bluecore?
AO: The people at Bluecore are a big part of why I look forward to coming to work everyday. I am surrounded by a group of people who are super intelligent yet humble and curious, jovial yet ruthless in execution and professional partners yet potential life-long friends. It doesn’t feel like going to a job when I leave for work every morning, but rather an opportunity to accomplish monumental feats alongside people I enjoy being around.
