I came in as a Waterloo co-op. Now I lead a team here.

Why I picked Rundoo as a co-op

I was excited by the prospect of joining a small startup that was trying to be ambitious and work quickly. I met quite a few people on the team and felt really welcome, and felt like I would get along with everyone. At the time Rundoo was less than 10 people and we weren't a live company, but I was just excited by the experience. It would also be my first time coming out to California.

I remember them being interested in me as a person and my life outside of just work, and felt that they too had their own interests.

I had a couple of offers from larger tech companies, but they didn't feel like startups anymore.

What I shipped

For the first year or two after we launched, Rundoo only did linked returns. To return any item, you had to find the original invoice, process a return, and you could only refund to one method of tender. For fast moving supply businesses, that was just too slow and hard to find.

So we remodeled our sales, sale products, and ledger models to support returning multiple items from various sales, or as fully unlinked returns. Took a few months in total: me, another full-time engineer, and two interns. I was the tech lead and main engineer.

The hardest part was remodeling such core concepts all while our clients kept their day to day business going. Zero downtime, all live.

Co-op to full-time to leading a team

I had an awesome experience as an intern. I felt revitalized and really energized by the team, the product, and the trust and impact I was able to have. I barely looked around for other full-time options because I just knew this was where I wanted to be, and topping it would be really hard.

I was working just as hard as everyone else, trusted to write production code and dive into the core project just like any other engineer. On the night of the go-live, I was in that same room as everyone else cranking out features to get us live the next day.

I came back as a full-time the summer after graduating, and have been working on core projects and tech leading teams since. I recently started managing my own little team, working with full-times and interns to keep improving core areas of our codebase like payments, accounting, and receivables.

Rundoo vs. a big-tech name

I would ask them what they actually care about and what they want out of their job. Rundoo is going to give you real impact, shipping production code alongside any other engineer, and will allow you to grow and learn as much as you want to and are capable of.

We believe in and are investing in our growth. Obviously we haven't IPO'd and won't be able to liquidate stock options like you could elsewhere. If you are looking for a brand name and the idea of prestige, it's not what I'd recommend. We want to treat our employees well and motivate them to come in every day, but we do it in service of our clients and our product, not in service of our resume. The resume builds as a result.

Why the next Waterloo co-op should apply

If you want to make a difference by using the latest technology while staying grounded in the impact we can have on the lives of independent supply stores, their employees, and customers, this is the place.