In May, Erich joined our team full time after interning with us last winter.  He has really hit the ground running and cares about how our customers use the product. We asked Erich to answer a few questions so that Thrive users could know a little more about him and his contributions to the platform so far.

1. Tell us a little about yourself.

I am a 22 year old recent college grad who loves being active, hanging out with others, and continually learning. During the weekdays, when I am not at work, I enjoy reading and coding even more. I am currently reading the Song of Ice and Fire series (Game of Thrones) and I want to start Lord of the Rings soon after. I also love reading books about psychology and entrepreneurism. I am attempting to learn Swift so I can make apps for the App Store. It is nice to start from the beginning of learning a language (rather than hitting the ground running like I did at work) so I can understand the concepts more fully. On the weekends I find myself spending time with my friends and/or doing outdoor activities (currently into rollerblading and tennis). Since I am a recent college grad, I will have to adjust to not going back to school for the first time in 17 years. I am excited to see where life takes me and all the fun the future has in store.

2. What do you love most about working at Lean Tech?

I love that Lean Tech encourages an environment of freedom and personal responsibility while still providing a great support system to help you when you get stuck or need help with your work. I enjoy being able to struggle and think through problems, but when I am unable to figure out the solution, my teammates will happily come and dig into the issue with me. Coming from a non-traditional path of schooling for software development (Biology and Biochemistry majors from Central College), there are many technical terms that I do not know yet or perhaps there are other algorithms and techniques that I haven’t heard of. However, the whole team is readily available to help me learn. I feel like I have been getting a crash course on software development and it’s pretty amazing to see where I started to where I am now.

3. How would you describe the culture at Lean Tech?

I think Lean Tech has some of the best people, ability and personality wise, which makes working enjoyable every day… even through pesky git conflict issues. I feel like bigger software companies would struggle to keep friendships (workships?) alive like we have. We are all really relaxed. Additionally, I love that the work I do directly affects users rather than just working on some big program that has already been built that affects a select few. The work and development I do at Lean Tech is implemented into the product quickly and directly placed into users hands soon after. It is great to see and participate in the development process from beginning to end.