http://www.likecool.com/Style/Hat/New%20Era%20x%20Star%20Wars%20Cap%20Collection/New-Era-x-Star-Wars-Cap-Collection.jpg

In a startup, you wear a lot of hats. Here are a few of the hats we put on at Toopher:

  • Developer. You get to program a lot. At Toopher we get to pick our next tasks. The code base is small and clean enough that you can work all over it pretty easily. We also sit close to one another, so you osmose a lot of code knowledge. Beyond building the base, you gain deeper knowledge with each task.
  • Product manager. You can negotiate what goes into the next release. Want something done another way? Talk to your peer and work it out.
  • Salesman. You can overtly sell, or more covertly sell. There are ample opportunities to talk to customers, but who wants to do that?! The real chance to sell comes when someone asks, “What do you do?” At a big company you say, “I work for X” and the person just shrugs and says, “Ah,” before walking off. With a startup you reply with something like, “I work for Toopher. We’re a two-factor auth startup downtown.” Suddenly, the questioner gets interested and asks for more information.
  • Designer. Need a graphic? Make one! (Or ask your co-worker who is a wiz at editing.) Our very talented programmers are also pretty handy with HTML, CSS, and Photoshop.
  • Tester. We test our code. It makes our developers and our software better.
  • Release manager. Some big companies and open source projects have a release manager–one person who ensures the product gets out the door. We all get to learn this skill.
  • DevOps and Tools. We don’t have an IT guy (nor gal). We build and deploy things ourselves–and it feels good!
  • CTO. Evan does an excellent job of letting us all evaluate alternatives and make technical decisions. There’s always a helping hand to guide you when you just want to do, but it’s liberating to have a voice too.
  • Writer. You’re reading the writings of a Toopher developer ;-) Between a linguist, a PhD, a liberal arts/CS double-major, and a couple of insanely well-read MS degree holders, we can string together a few words. We write blog posts, craft user dialogs, create technical documentation and how-tos, and update the wiki.

As you can see, life as a Toopher dev is interesting. We mostly code, but there’s plenty of other ways to get involved.

If you’re looking for a change or you’re not sure what you want to do, join a startup and be a hat model!