Ever wondered how Karri works? Who is responsible for your seamless experience on the app? Who makes sure that your personal details are handled correctly and your data is secure?
Enter our tech team.
You’ll usually find our tech team hiding in a dimly lit room, staring at a screen of what looks like to the normal eye, a bunch of mixed up letters and numbers. They’re normally binging on a tub of sour worms whilst endlessly sipping on their tea, sometimes, just as you forget that they’re in the office, you’ll hear a shout of distress from the Dev Room.
We try to stay out of the way of our developers, they are, after all, keeping the Karri wheels turning. But, in a desperate bid to decode the complex lives of the tech team, we managed to grab them for a few minutes and ask them some questions.
What has been your biggest EVER win in the tech space?
It is all about transitioning a business from a startup into a more robust structure, that will stand up as a tool for enabling the business going forward as opposed to just running it. Karri for me is a great example of what I like doing and stands out above the rest as a solid platform for building a better business with great responsiveness to customer’s needs.
Name a few of your favourite things:
Great tasting food. Travel. My colossal movie collection.
Why did you choose to work on Karri?
Karri is one of the few startups that truly has the potential to break out of South Africa and solve a global problem that mainstream systems have ignored for years. Being able to be involved in such a movement is what gets me up in the morning.
What has been the most challenging tech issue you’ve faced to date:
One line of code took down a significant part of a business for 7 hours, but the way we were able to diagnose, correct and recover from it in a professional way, taught me a lot about how doctors do triage and that panicking doesn’t help anything or anyone.
What has been your biggest EVER win in the tech space?
Two big ones stand out for me… Diving in and launching Karri V2 in less than 3 months was a big one. Closely followed by seeing my first major change in a live app being used by roughly 5000-8000 people.
Name a few of your favourite things:
Tea, cars, cars, cars, industrial design, tech, aviation, horology, travel, did I mention cars?
Why did you choose to work on Karri?:
Jules threatened to hunt me down if I didn’t! (Everyone laughs uncomfortably)
Truth be told, I love start-ups and the energy they bring. You land up gaining way more experience because things are constantly changing and you have to wear multiple hats – not just “Software Engineer”
In my first job, I went from Web Dev to Backend to Marketing graphics to Product development. Here at Karri, I have done some SQL dev, Mobile dev, web dev, some graphic design, customer support and I’ve had to make tea as well. Start-ups are fascinating, and so is watching them grow – being a part of that growth, is something I thoroughly enjoy.
What has been the most challenging tech issue you’ve faced to date:
Once again – a few
Fixing a “fire” by diving in with the team and getting into a problem-solving flow
When I first started with building apps some years ago, my first full mobile application was built (for a client no less) with technology I had no idea about on a framework that was in beta and launched to the store without any knowledge of how that process worked. Good times.
What has been your biggest EVER win in the tech space?
Biggest ever win, would be using my skills within the dev team to elevate our tech to the next level. Inevitably making our tech more efficient and user-friendly, resulting in happy customers.
Name a few of your favourite things:
Food, going to the gym and binge-watching series.
Why did you choose to work on Karri?
Karri, in my opinion, is the best startup. It’s full to the brim with dynamic and different cultures. Being part of Karri has improved my skills in all aspects of my life, both personal and professionally.
What has been the most challenging tech issue you’ve faced to date:
This gives me a headache just thinking about it. It was a mapping function on our tracking tool which took me forever to figure out, in the end, it was pretty simple.
We’re always on the lookout for talented Software Developers. If you are one of them and fancy chatting to us more about Karri, contact Jules on jules@karripay.com.