I’m Alex and I’m the Founder at Adadot.
First off, I’d like to express my gratitude to the staff, and all other beautiful humans of HackerNoon, for nominating me for a 2022 Noonies award!
I’ve been nominated for the following categories and if you think my writing offers good value, please take some time to check out these award pages and vote for me:
Software Developer of The Year
Learn more about my views on tech and my journey in the tech industry via the interview below.
#1. What do you currently do and what’s your favorite part about it?
I am the founder and CEO of Adadot. Adadot is an analytics tool for developers. We help developers improve the way they work, collaborate, and feel.
Engineers are increasingly under pressure to be more productive and ship faster. However, its difficult to improve what you cannot see or measure. Data is spread across Github / Gitlab, Slack, JIRA, calendar, e-mail making it impossible for a human to synthesize insight from.
Using established developer productivity frameworks like Github's SPACE, we help each developer improve without burning themselves out. Data automatically collected and used to pinpoint what working patterns to improve.
My role is broad and covers everything minus coding meaning that I look after product, sales, customer success, investor relations and admin. My amazing CTO and co-founder runs the tech team.
My favorite part is speaking to developers and seeing their face light up when they see the platform. When I hear how they see the platform impacting their work and wellbeing in a positive way, it makes it all worth it.
#2. How did you get started with your Tech Career?
After a career in marketing I ended up taking a senior position at a series A startup which was a great learning experience.
We (co-founder and I) came up with Adadot right before the world changed in 2020. We knew that supporting remote teams in fast growth organisations was the right bet and increasing the timing became right too.
We jumped in with both feet and the rest is history.
#3. If Utopia were a color what color do you think it’d be and why?
Some sort of Unicorn Holo thing. Is that even a color?
#4. If everything about HackerNoon changed drastically, what is one detail you’d like to keep exactly the same?
The community. I am part of a lot of groups and online communities and the people here are genuinely curious and friendly. Not so much the case in other places ;)
#5. What’s your favorite thing about the internet?
Cats. And also the fact that we can hold the accumulated knowledge of the human race at the palm of our hands. This honestly blows my mind every single day.
#6. It’s an apocalypse of ‘walking dead’ proportions and you can only own a singular piece of technology, what would it be?
A defibrillator. I recently completed CPR training and I am still fascinated that a small machine like that can save lives.
#7. What is your least favorite thing about the internet?
Trolls and negativity. I think we can all definitely do with less of that.
#8. If you were given $10 million to invest in something today what would you invest in and why?
This is a very biased response but I would invest it in my startup, Adadot. The reason why is that I believe in what we are building. Adadot helps developers improve the way they work, collaborate and feel so I am keen to make a positive impact in the lives of the builders of future tech.
#9. What’s something you’re currently learning or excited to learn?
How to run a startup. The learning curve is incredibly steep, there is always something new to learn and improve on.
#10. Would you rather travel 10 years into the past or 10 years into the future? Give reasons for your answer.
Future. Hands down. I remember the last 10 years quite well so I see no reason in revisiting. I am however infinitely curious about the future and I would love to see what tech will look like in 10 years.