Industry

AppFolio (2018–present)

AppFolio (appfolio.com) sells web-based software to landlords for managing their apartment buildings. Or as marketing would say, AppFolio’s Property Manager is a cloud-based software-as-a-service that provides financial accounting and communications solutions for real-estate management companies.

The engineering work is difficult and technical, yet the core business concepts are grounded in reality: money, apartments, tenants, text messages, leaky faucets, electricians, pet deposits, etc. Our customers are down-to-earth and they appreciate us. These are nice qualities to have in a job.

The company was founded by an engineer and a computer science professor, and it maintains a strong engineering backbone: Our engineering teams are multi-disciplinary, meaning that each team has everyone it needs to add new features to our software: a few software engineers, a Quality Assurance engineer, a User-Experience designer, and a Product Manager. We strive to be agile, but we’re not dogmatic about it. We aim for each team to autonomously and continuously deliver value to our customers. We strive to uphold our sensible company values, like:

Simpler is better.
Small, focused teams keep us agile.
Listening to our customers is in our DNA.

AppFolio is currently a good size: big enough to offer stable employment, yet still small enough to give engineers autonomy; for example, engineers can talk directly to customers and they love it. For example:

“YES! YES! YES! Wow… I’m excited that a live person actually got back to me. You guys really do read our feedbacks. 😊 “

Below are a few personal highlights of my work at AppFolio.

Recruiting event at Northeastern University ¶

My intern Ciarra and I gave a job talk at NEU about AppFolio and the career-growth opportunities it offers. Ciarra talked about her experience on our “team of new-hires” — an excellent “customer testamonial”. We had lines out the door of hopeful students!

Feb 2020

► SLIDES

Project Sea Cucumber (Customer Visit) ¶

AppFolio’s software engineers love writing useful software. Who doesn’t like feeling appreciated? And what better way to feel appreciated for your useful software than by parachuting an engineering team into a customer’s office and delighting them by adding some new desired feature to our software, right before their eyes??

Apr 2019

Leading a team of new-hires ¶

In 2019 I led a new team of new-hires: two new software engineering interns, a new QA intern, a new Product Manager, and a 3-month-old UX Designer. We worked hard, delivered value to our customers, and had a ton of fun along the way. The interns did a great job and we hired them full-time. My intern Ciarra wrote up her experience on AppFolio’s Engineering blog.

Jun 2019

The Smile Machine (Hack Day project) ¶

For Hack Day at AppFolio, John and I created the “Smile Machine” — two helmets armed with Raspberry Pi-powered cameras that pop a water balloon on your head when you smile. Since then, the Smile Machines have become a venerable tradition at AppFolio, most recently to celebrate our interns with an intern-vs-mentor staredown extravaganza.

Jul 2017

AeroVironment (2008–2012)

Here are some highlights of the Global Observer airplane program that I worked on for four years at AeroVironment (avinc.com).

The Global Observer system is designed to work like a 12-mile-high, redeployable satellite to provide coverage over an area of up to 600 miles in diameter. Global Observer will be capable of supporting multiple high-value applications, including:

Communications relay
Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions for defense and homeland security
Storm tracking
Telecommunications infrastructure
Wildfire detection/tracking
Maritime operations
Disaster recovery services

For more info, see the Wikipedia article on Global Observer.

Historic Hydrogen-Powered Flight ¶

Global Observer successfully completed its historic first hydrogen-powered flight at Edwards Air Force Base (EAFB) in California.

Jan 2011