Interview: Nils Hagge, Director of Engineering speaks about bringing together people and technology, a career as a software engineer and seeking out cutting-edge infrastructure
In a series of interviews with employees working at the heart of Seerene, we explore the invested knowledge and passion that keeps a software development organisation running on a day-to-day basis. This week, we spoke to Nils Hagge, the Director of Engineering at Seerene who has been with the company for roughly 14 months.
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Hello Nils.
Hello!
Thanks for making the time to speak with us. So, to begin with — where did your career begin? Which paths did you follow to arrive at Seerene?
I was previously a Senior Site Operations Engineer at PayPal with around 18 years of experience in building infrastructure and scaling platforms,with responsibilities that evolved slightly when I transitioned to my role at Seerene. Although I was also managing the Tech Ops team when I first arrived here, I also came to manage the software development teams when I shifted to my position as Director of Engineering. So ultimately, my role at Seerene involved something quite different from half of the engineers being Tech Ops, and the other half software developers, and the main difference being how I now have a direct responsibility for humans and people. Managing people is now an official part of my job.
I suppose that on that level, it’s interesting to consider how even the most technologically complex of companies revolves around the effort put in by a group of human individuals; although Seerene appears as super technical for its product being software, there’s always the central human element that needs to be taken care of if you want the computers to work.
Yes: this really defines my work in the day-to-day and I often find myself bringing together people and technology so that they can meet in the middle. As a start-up we have the freedom to start from scratch when it comes to designing our infrastructure, with no need to manage lots of legacy infrastructure like on-premise solutions, stuff like that. So, we have this opportunity to start with new technology, and begin at a very high technical level. With this also comes the possibility and sometimes the need for adopting a creative approach; we sometimes find ourselves having to work with limited resources, which is a situation that really empowers your creativity and places you in a good state of mind for finding solutions to real technical problems.
Moving on to the team dynamic of the software engineering at Seerene: have there been any particularly great changes in recent times?
During the last 12 months, the company changed 100% and switched every coin. We hired a lot of new engineers, changed the technical background of the infrastructure and also the infrastructure on a software level; previously, we had it running on an ISP somewhere in Frankfurt, and now we have a cloud infrastructure with the latest and greatest stuff. Now, our development team runs with the best, most up-to-date and advanced toolchain that you can get. In this we’re equipped with ticket systems, version systems, continuous integration, continuous builds, continuous deploy; we really changed the infrastructure, architecture-wise, to integrate new languages, new storage systems, new tickets systems and so on.
How is Seerene better because of all of this? How does it convert to actual results in the team? Sometimes a team has lots of state-of-the-art technology, but it doesn’t really come to so much.
Firstly, it helps us to include new developers in our process of software development as we expand our activity and personnel, and secondly, this standard makes us much faster in our software development. We can take on board comments from our clients and perhaps develop a new feature in only 10% of the time that we would have spent a year ago.
Moving forward, do you see this figure continuously improving?
Yes, of course. We are always focussed on using the latest toolset and toolchain to maximise our chances of staying at the head of our field.
Compared to previous workplaces, how would you describe the relationship between developers? Typical or atypical? Is there much feedback between you as a director and the developers?
Yes, our very short and fast feedback process means that anyone who comes up with a new idea, a new approach or whatever can throw it to the team and ask for and receive immediate feedback. It’s a really open, communicative situation, with many conversations in-person. We’re in a state of fluid communication at all times.
Software engineers can have very distinct working styles and rhythms. How do you approach this as a Director?
This is something that we’re very careful to respect: we have some software developers who are very focussed on working alone, and who have expressed that we can expect the best results from them when they’re working at home, alone, on their computer, without being disturbed in the usual office time. This can work in some special cases, and we make space for that — we have a lot of very academic brainpower in Seerene, and it’s important to allow for the particular conditions that each mind requires to perform at its best.
How do you find yourself walking between the realms of abstract, theoretical thinking and the drive towards a more commercial focus?
Our product itself is very cutting-edge, being focussed on software engineering for software engineers in an engineering department, and this means that we have the right kind of mindset to develop that software. Our customers are on the same skill level as our engineers, meaning that we have the right perspective to understand the need of our customers; we also have an amazing product management team who helps us to design the right product. For sure, we have to handle the pressure of delivering new features in a very short period of time by delivering rapidly, but it’s also important to deliver a product that we can actually use. We need to strike a balance.
Do you find yourself having to compromise one or the other?
Personally, I’m not that focussed about the money involved — so, nee!
Actually, I guess it’s a really nice thing to consider: the product is going to be better when software engineers remain focussed on engineering rather than on commercial intentions. They’re not necessarily working for profit, not just getting things done because it’s their job, but actually holding a very vested interest in writing good code.
Writing code correctly is the key motivation that drives us to perform as the level at which we’re doing our job, rather than how much money we get when we deliver that kind of feature and so on. Of course, there’s always some consideration of numbers; how much money we might need for the next quarter, for this year, and such, but I ensure that this kind of pressure never arrives on the shoulders of the engineers themselves. Engineers should be motivated by developing good software instead of generating money out of their features.
Cool. So next, speaking on behalf of engineers who might aspire to your kind of position, would you have any advice to offer? Which kinds of qualities would you prioritise in people who would like to become a part of our team, or ultimately be a director?
If I had some advice for becoming an engineer in this team, I would advise having leidenschaft,.. what’s leidenschaft? Attitude? Just a minute please — (speaks into phone: Ich suche das Wort Leidenschaft) — ah, Passion. So, what you need is the right attitude, a real passion, and surely a huge knowledge about technology. But having the right passion and attitude I would say is 60–70% of what’s needed — the rest is something that you can learn. You need to have an open mind, you need to be ready to take the next steps and to seek out the next path to the next level of software development, meaning we don’t remain focussed on using what we have and are more focussed on developing something new. If you have the right attitude, then you’ll always be welcome.
And you mentioned something about seeking out new approaches and strategies, — would you say that it’s important to get it right, follow certain rules, as you’re a developer, should you also be open to change?
I would never say that sticking to what you know is a good approach, as it means that you stay where you are at the present. It’s always essential to try the new approach, accept push-back if you’re going the wrong way, and be ready to change the direction if needed. Being open-minded is definitely the most important.
One final question — how do you see Seerene developing or evolving in the future?
My vision of Seerene is that it will be an omnipresent tool, and an integral component in the software development chain in general.
So you would say it has potential for standardised use?
Yes, exactly — it has huge potential to be a part of the standard toolset, because of how it has such universal value for an engineer.
In which case, it should be very interesting to see how everything evolves. We’re just about out of time; thank you very much for your time.
Thank you!
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Seerene values the combination of human talent and passion that goes into its work, and is always open to hearing from you if you believe that you have the right skills. For the latest vacancies and career opportunities head to https://seerene.com/careers/
