Life at Resolver

This post was partially written by and edited using ChatGPT. Last month the Resolver development team had their first official hack week, which was dedicated to checking out the potential to improve our software with the help of OpenAI. What is OpenAI? You’ve probably heard of OpenAI since their ChatGPT program has made headlines frequently in recent months. According to my assistant editor: OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research laboratory consisting of a team of experts and researchers in the field of machine learning, natural language processing, robotics, and other related areas. The organization aims to develop advanced artificial intelligence in a safe and beneficial manner to benefit humanity as a whole. They conduct cutting-edge research and also develop various AI-based products and tools such as language models, chatbots, and robotics applications. ChatGPT ...

Back in July of this year, our Product Manager here in the Consumer Team at Resolver moved on to a new job. This was a great loss both for us and the wider company and we knew that it would take several months to find and recruit the right person for the job. During the interim, it was decided that we would try to become somewhat self-sufficient, with our Tech Lead, CTO, and Head of Content all pitching in and directing our efforts over the following few months. ...

Remember remember, the 5th November…the Resolver developers took part in another AWS GameDay! Our team of 4 had a wide range of engineering, AWS, and most importantly, GameDay experience. Given that the Resolver team were prize-winners at the last GameDay in July, the pressure was on to keep up our reputation. Like the last time, the premise of the day was that our team works for a fictitious start-up, ‘Unicorn Rentals’. However this time, the theme and focus of the day was on security. Each team would have to complete various tasks to win points, and the teams with the most points win prizes. There were noticeably more teams taking part this time - from just 6 in July to now 33! It was going to be tough to keep our prize-winning reputation. ...

On 1st July, a team of Resolver developers made up of both Accord and Consumer members joined forces to compete in the AWS GameDay. The premise of the day is that it is our induction at a brand new start-up ‘Unicorn Rentals’, a fictitious company who dominate the Legendary Animal Rental Market (LARM) by providing temporary use of a unicorn to ever-demanding children. The developers at Unicorn Rentals have recently moved on to other ventures, leaving a lot of legacy services behind them. It was our job to try to move away from these to ensure faster technology and therefore more unicorns! The strategy throughout the day to earn as many points as possible (and therefore beat the other teams) was to keep our router running, to launch microservices so that other teams can use them and route to as many other teams microservices (especially fast ones!) as possible. Points were lost at any moment for sending messages to our own microservices and for our router not working. ...

A day at Makers was a lot like going to a theme park with your pals: The eager excitement of waking up and getting ready. Meeting your friends for breakfast, fueling up on coffee, and making all the best-laid plans for what is about to come. Enjoying all the sights and sounds of wonderment and magic. Going for lunch and exploring the area for delicious food. Tackling the big rollercoasters, and experiencing all the highs and lows. Leaving exhausted, and desperate to come back. ...

Remote working isn’t a new thing for developers; at Resolver we were already doing it regularly. Our meetings were remote-friendly, if not fully remote, and Slack would keep us all constantly connected. So when we went into lockdown in March, the transition to home-working was perhaps easier for our team than for others. But when it came to hiring new developers, removing any face-to-face contact posed some new challenges. Networking events The hiring process would often begin by speaking at events such as LRUG, giving a summary of Resolver and what we’re striving for. That gave us an opportunity to meet any interested candidates straight away and to make those important first impressions. Under lockdown, we’ve had to approximate that by posting to mailing lists, posting to LinkedIn and using recruiters. We’ve seen some good results doing that, and the market for Ruby developers still seems to be strong. But it can also be easy for the message to get lost in the noise. Emphasising what sets Resolver apart as a great place for developers has been more important than ever. ...

I finished Makers, a software development bootcamp, on Friday 13th March (yes, the irony did resonate with me as I wrote that…!) Traditionally, on the last day of the course, students show off their final projects at Demo Day. However, as we were making the final touches to our projects, we were given the news that the event couldn’t go ahead and would instead take place remotely. I think that was the moment of realisation for myself and others in my cohort at the reality of the destructive virus that was unfolding. ...