Engineer.inspect with Farshid Zaman
A Vimeo dev dreams of Gorur Mangshor Jhol and Bangladesh.
Welcome to Engineer.inspect, an interview series introducing engineers across Vimeo. Get a glimpse into who we are and what we’re about.
Intro, please. What’s your name?
Hi, my name is Farshid Zaman, and my pronouns are he/him.
What do you do at Vimeo?
I’m a Software Engineer on the Viewer Experience team at Vimeo OTT. The Viewer Experience team, also known as the VX team, is responsible for providing the best possible experience to increase viewer and subscriber retention. The types of work we usually deal with include product development, improving existing features, performance enhancements, and many more.
Which languages and frameworks do you use at work?
Mostly Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, and React.
Tell us about something you worked on recently that you crushed. Or that you were crushed by.
One of the tasks that I worked on recently with another team member was Customer Account Deletion. Previously, we didn’t allow customer deletion from within any of our apps. Apple recently mandated in their app policy that any app that supports account signup should also support account deletion. We mostly worked on the backend part of it. As easy as Account Deletion may sound, it was actually not that easy, the primary reason being there are so many entities related to a customer, which we had to handle as well. Additionally, we had to confirm with the legal team on a regular basis that whatever changes we were making would abide by the new policy. Along the way, we found some architectural design flaws in our system as well, which we’re planning to improve in the near future!
What’s something you’re learning about on the job?
There are few topics and tools which are worthy of mentioning. The one that is the most foreign to me is Terraform. Terraform is an open-source, Infrastructure as Code software tool. Infrastructure as Code basically means managing infrastructure through code instead of using a different service’s UI. We use Terraform to manage Heroku, AWS, Fastly, and a few other services. This is good because it decreases the risk of human error, creates a consistent way of updating infrastructure, and automatically documents infrastructure changes. All that said, the syntax and coding style for Terraform are slightly different than app development, which is why it isn’t very intuitive for me yet. I’m still learning and hope to be good at it soon.
Favorite thing about your job.
Definitely my team. We have a pretty small team, which gives us the opportunity to really get to know each other and also feel valued within the team. In addition to that, I feel like we are true believers of autonomy, which helps me in becoming a better engineer by allowing me to make crucial decisions on a regular basis.
Also, I would be doing a disservice to my manager if I didn’t mention how great of a manager he has been. He always makes sure that we have enough learning opportunities and develop as engineers while having fun and maintaining a good work-life balance. This is a hard combo to maintain; shoutout to Joe O’Conor for making it happen!
What’s something you read recently that challenged you?
I recently read a blog post from an acquaintance of mine who lost three of his direct family members in the span of three weeks because of COVID-19. This has taught me to not take anything for granted and to always be in touch with the ones close to me. I am not very good with keeping in touch, but after reading through his experience, I was a little shaken and I have been trying to put in extra effort to keep in touch with my family and friends on a regular basis.
It’s your last meal on earth. Tell me about it.
This is really hard since I am a huge food lover and can think of multiple favorite food items from different cuisines. That being said, I think I’ll have to go with my comfort food, Gorur Mangshor Jhol, which is a traditional Bangladeshi beef or mutton curry with white rice and lentil soup. My mom used to make this once a week when I was a child, and my sister and I would eagerly wait for the rest of the week for that special day. If I have to pick one last meal, this probably has to be it.
Does Bangladesh hold a special place in your heart?
Bangladesh holds a very special place in my heart. I moved to the United States for college when I was 20 years old, so I spent my entire childhood and teenage years in Bangladesh. I have my family, a lot of friends, and memories that I left behind when I came here. The thing I miss the most, besides my family, is my sports life in Bangladesh. I played basketball professionally for about three years before leaving for the United States. I was also a part of my school’s soccer team. Therefore, most of my days were spent in basketball and soccer practices. In addition to that, I was a bassist in a thrash metal band. Altogether, I was socially very active during those days. I had to put a stop to most of those things after I moved here because I was focusing more on my studies, and my passion was slowly shifting towards traveling. I still go back to Bangladesh every year for a couple of weeks and try to relive those moments, but as the saying goes: “Time is like a river. You cannot touch the same water twice, because the flow that has passed will never pass again.” It’s very different now, but I still enjoy every second of it with my friends and family, along with some good Bangladeshi food!
What has inspired you recently?
Not just recently, but something that has been inspiring me for a long time is the world hunger problem. I come from a developing country, and I have seen it firsthand. One of my favorite quotes from Amartya Sen, a Nobel prize-winning economist, is: “Starvation is the characteristic of some people not having enough food to eat. It is not the characteristic of there not being enough food to eat.” I am a true believer of that, and I believe as members of the human race, it’s our duty as a whole to solve this problem and make sure not a single person is going to sleep hungry on any given day. I’ve thought about different app ideas which have the potential to partially solve this problem, but that requires participation from a huge percentage of people who are capable of helping others. Maybe someday we’ll solve this problem, maybe we won’t, but I am hopeful!
Leave us with your favorite Vimeo video.
This is a short clip of the city where I grew up as a child:
Lost in Dhaka on Vimeo.
