Sam is part of the Engineering team at Goalbook. He worked in the film and television industry before making a career switch to software engineering and joining Goalbook. In this Q&A, Sam shares what attracted him to work for Goalbook and the benefits of working in EdTech.
1. What attracted you to Goalbook and working in EdTech?
In my journey of switching careers from the film and television industry into software development, I became very aware of the transformative power of education in a person’s life. As I began to learn software development, there were a lot of apps designed to help me learn new skills. I saw what a huge impact software can have in education, and I thought that was really cool.
I also recalled my own experiences growing up in school and how what worked for one group of students didn’t work for another. Any student can learn, but a strategy for one isn’t necessarily going to work for another. How do we allow teachers to have strategies that work for all different students? Software opens up the ability to make teachers superhuman and have different plans for different students more easily than they would otherwise.
As I learned about Goalbook’s mission, it really spoke to me because it’s about trying to provide that transformative power of education to all students, especially those that might be at risk of missing out on education.
When I got to know more about the company, it seemed like Goalbook has a cool, special thing going on.
“As I learned about Goalbook’s mission, it really spoke to me because it’s about trying to provide that transformative power of education to all students.”
2. What is your role on the Engineering team, and what are your favorite parts of it?
On the Engineering team we all do a little bit of everything related to maintaining and developing our software. My job is to do a combination of monitoring and maintaining everything we have running and then developing new features for our users.
Building a new feature that may help a student learn and that our users are going to be excited about is my favorite part. I love knowing that our software has a positive impact on students and the education system.
3. What does your day to day look like?
A typical day starts by catching up on emails and reading new code that other engineers have written. After that I generally have 2–3 meetings throughout the day. In between and after my meetings, I’m usually either writing code or investigating how to complete a project I’ve been assigned.
4. How do you work and communicate with your manager?
Every day but Tuesdays the Engineering team has a standup meeting that’s 15 minutes long where we share what we’re working on and get input from our manager and each other.
I have 1:1 meetings with my manager once a week where we catch up on my progress, look back at the week, and look forward to the next week. We exchange any feedback or information that’s relevant in these meetings.
Otherwise we’ll message on G-Chat or have meetings here and there when needed.
“I love that I’ve gotten a lot of experience in this job because I have my hands in every aspect of being a software engineer.”
5. What are one or two things you love here at Goalbook?
I love that I feel like I’m doing something that makes a positive difference in the world.
I also love the culture of the company. The people that work for Goalbook are some of the friendliest, most positive, and most sincere people I’ve met. Since we’re a remote company, I don’t spend a lot of time in the same physical space as my coworkers, but I genuinely look forward to our in-person meetings because the people are really fun to be around.
When I started, I remember reading our internal newsletter and saw that a coworker shared pictures about climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. I thought that this is a company of people who do interesting things and have cool things to talk about.
As far as being on the Engineering team, I love that I’ve gotten a lot of experience in this job because I have my hands in every aspect of being a software engineer. I’ve grown professionally, more than if I had gotten a position doing a very specific engineering role every day.
“What I’ve learned on a technical level in the past year-and-a-half could fill a textbook.”
6. What have you learned in your role so far?
What I’ve learned on a technical level in the past year-and-a-half could fill a textbook. I was fortunate enough to get this job when I was relatively new to the field, and being able to incrementally absorb the cumulative decades of knowledge from my team members has been awesome.
I’ve learned a lot about the education system and special education. I knew about both of them to an extent before, but having this job has helped me to learn even more.
I also have learned just how much I like learning new things. Goalbook really encourages you when you want to learn something new and provides resources for you. We have a professional development stipend that we get to use, so I’ve been taking classes, including my first graduate-level course.
7. What’s your favorite memory during your time at Goalbook?
Twice a year, Goalbook has in-person all-company retreats, which I always really enjoy. One of the highlights that comes to mind was this past summer when our Engineering team went kayaking off the Southern California coast and passed some sea lions and a seal on our voyage.
