Rod Strougo is the Senior Engineering Manager for Android and iOS Boxer. He will share his advice on how small and nimble teams can scale up their apps efficiently
Greetings, Rod! We are happy to welcome you at VMware Bulgaria! Can you please introduce yourself for our readers?
I am an engineer with over 22 years of experience in various types of development ranging from large distributed systems at IBM to mobile applications. For the past 4 years I have worked at VMware as a Senior Engineering Manager for Android and iOS Boxer, a smart enterprise email client that hundreds of thousands of people depend on daily.
One of my proudest career achievements before I've joined VMware is that I led a team of iOS developers and trainers that pioneered Apple's iOS training in Latin America and Europe. Your readers may know me as a published author in the iOS field or maybe have seen me in one of the iOS courses I have taught both online and offline.
One of my proudest career achievements before I've joined VMware is that I led a team of iOS developers and trainers that pioneered Apple's iOS training in Latin America and Europe. Your readers may know me as a published author in the iOS field or maybe have seen me in one of the iOS courses I have taught both online and offline.
Rod, can you share what brings you to Sofia?
My main mission in Sofia is to set the foundations of the first VMware Bulgaria team that will be solely dedicated to developing native Android and iOS apps. I have the exciting mission to build a local mobile technologies team from scratch for our product Boxer. We currently offer a variety of positions for Android and iOS developers with various levels of experience that offer a great opportunity for career development.
In addition, while I am in town I wanted to meet up and exchange experience with the local iOS community. That is why on the 21st of May I will present at the upcoming SwiftSofia Meetup.
In addition, while I am in town I wanted to meet up and exchange experience with the local iOS community. That is why on the 21st of May I will present at the upcoming SwiftSofia Meetup.
You will be talking about Development at Scale. How did you chose the topic and what lessons would you like to share?
I wanted to share the exciting story of how my team and I managed to scale Boxer from a few thousand to a few millions of users without growing our team! The number of bugs/issues and other problems increased 10-20 times so we had no other choice but to come up with innovative solutions. We made a lot of mistakes, and I wanted to share what to avoid a well as the best practices that worked for us.
Most of the advice is all about maintaining, monitoring, and scaling a product as your user base grows exponentially. We discovered a set of items every team could do that would greatly reduce its support burden, and allow developers to catch issues before they reach the customers. There were a lot of other tricks and tips I would love to share with the local iOS community.
I know that many developers have to step into legacy code bases, and am confidant they can use some of the techniques we employed to refactor/update those codebases to Swift and newer iOS APIs, so I believe the meetup will help engineers be smarter as they scale their own apps.
Most of the advice is all about maintaining, monitoring, and scaling a product as your user base grows exponentially. We discovered a set of items every team could do that would greatly reduce its support burden, and allow developers to catch issues before they reach the customers. There were a lot of other tricks and tips I would love to share with the local iOS community.
I know that many developers have to step into legacy code bases, and am confidant they can use some of the techniques we employed to refactor/update those codebases to Swift and newer iOS APIs, so I believe the meetup will help engineers be smarter as they scale their own apps.
If you would like to meet Rod in person and learn more about the career opportunities at his new team, you can register for the upcoming SwiftSofia meetup on the 21st of May at COSMOS Coworking Camp, ul. "Angel Kanchev" 3 · Sofia. The event starts at 19:00.
