Recently quite a few changes have happened within Jappies’ life. First of all, he is no longer at OpenLearning. This relationship ended at the end of February. March was used for job searching. To help with this a proper portfolio was constructed. Last week there were three interviews with Daisee, and Saturday Jappie accepted the offer.

Bio

For this new job Jappie was asked to write a short bio, which he thought would be a nice addition to this blog post as it explains his current situation quite well:

Jappie joins Daisee as Software Engineer, he is quite excited about working with Haskell and practical AI.

In his previous role Jappie was a Full stack developer at OpenLearning. Building various systems, from spam detection to remote code execution within containers. Before that he just graduated from his MSc in AI from Utrecht University, he chose to travel rather than taking up an offer for a PhD position
because he didn’t felt much for a career in academia. The decision for doing a masters in AI was made during his time in China where he did an internship for his bachelor degree in Software Engineering.

Arriving here on a `working holiday’, Jappie likes it here and hopes he can stay longer. The weather is better, the meetups are interesting, and it’s quite satisfying to build up a life starting from almost nothing. Jappie enjoys building things, from programming project to virtual kingdoms in computer games.

Expectations

Daisee and Jappie found each other at the functional programming meetup. They announced it as doing work with AI, and Jappie happens to be interested in both functional programming as well as AI.

During the interview it was explained that initial tasks however were of a more practical nature. Such as devops and implementing a better UI. so there isn’t much AI work to begin with. However Jappie expects that after a while there would be more tasks in either of that.

First day

After finishing his first day Jappie looks back with satisfaction. The CTO takes a much more active role than at his previous company, which is pleasant because now it feels like there is direction. His colleagues seem nice too, all day people were coming over to introduce themselves to Jappie. His desk neighbor is also nice and very knowledge-able. Apparently a hardened Haskell veteran and a fellow Gentoo user/victim (rip Gentoo).

Then there was the coffee machine. At his previous job the CEO didn’t like coffee, so didn’t invest in it. In the new job however there was a full blown espresso machine. This machine is both a blessing and a curse, it’s a blessing in that now one can drink all he desires, but a curse in that addiction will follow. Not to speak about the impact it has upon ones’ sleep cycle.

Thinking about the introductions, some of his colleagues had very impressive track records indeed. For example, one of the founders apparently led a merger between two big companies. At the time it Jappie didn’t quite realize how difficult doing such a thing is. Jappie thinks it’s a good thing he’s surrounded by veterans. He can learn a lot from these people, just by being around them.