Next up in our employee spotlight is Software Engineer William Tabi. The talent behind one of our most popular recent feature releases, cURL-to-Tines, William shares more about expanding his frontend developer skills and his typical work week.
Can you tell us a little more about yourself?
I joined Tines in March of 2020. Before that, I worked at Intercom as a software engineer for five years. I studied computer engineering at TU Dublin (formerly DIT).
I'm from Cameroon, but surprisingly, I have no interest in football! I've lived in Dublin since 2009.
What does a typical workday or week look like for you at Tines?
Every engineering team member sets a personal goal each week, so it's usually clear what I will be working on. On a daily basis, I could be working on accomplishing my goals, reviewing code changes, tech plans, and proposals from other engineers, or providing support to other team members. I also have recurring meetings, including a daily sync with the engineering team to discuss our progress on projects or bring up a topic or question for broader discussion, and a weekly review meeting with the design team to sync up on ongoing and upcoming projects. Also, depending on how busy our hiring pipeline is that week, I could have one or two interview sessions with candidates.
What's the coolest thing you've worked on to date?
A few months ago, I built a small feature for Tines called cURL-to-Tines. It enables you to copy and paste cURL examples from many standard API docs straight into Tines to create an Action. This dramatically reduces the effort required to set up a Tines Story that interacts with third-party APIs. Also, our customers loved this!
What have you learned since you started working at Tines?
Before joining Tines, I worked primarily as a backend engineer for most of my career. At Tines, I wanted to expand my skills into front-end development. I am now reasonably comfortable working with React + Relay + GraphQL. I've already built several front-end features, e.g., cURL-to-Tines and improving the panning/zooming experience on the Tines Storyboard.
What do you like to do outside of work?
I spend most of my free time with my two young kids, so I have very little time for hobbies. I am an avid Formula 1 fan, so I'll be glued to the screen on racing weekends. Occasionally, I go hiking in the Wicklow mountains with friends, but I haven't done this since the start of the pandemic.
Interested in joining our engineering team? Please view our current openings and apply here: https://www.tines.com/careers