I managed a team for years. I came to Rundoo to build again.

Why I went back to building

I studied computer science at Berkeley and spent five years at Ironclad, first as a software engineer and then as an engineering manager. I'm glad I did both. But somewhere along the way I realized the part of the job I missed most was the part I'd traded away: actually building the thing.

So when I started looking, I wasn't looking for the next rung. I was looking for a place where being close to the work, and close to the people the work is for, was the whole point. Rundoo was unusually clear about that.

Day one is at a store, not a desk

At most software companies, the distance between the person writing the code and the person living with it is measured in layers: a support team, a product manager, a roadmap, a ticket queue. At Rundoo, that distance is measured in feet.

When an engineer joins, their first project isn't a project at all. You spend a full day working at one of our clients' stores, ringing up sales, fielding the weird returns, and watching where the software helps and where it gets in the way. You cannot fake the empathy you get from holding the line at a register while the contractor behind you checks his watch.

My turn: gift cards in a greenhouse

That closeness doesn't end after onboarding. When you get staffed on a feature, the first thing you do is identify three to five pilot clients who need it most. Then you build with those clients — shipping early versions, watching them get used in the wild, and iterating until the clients genuinely love it. Not tolerate it, not submit feedback about it. Love it.

For me, that feature was gift cards, which we built as part of our expansion into lawn and garden. One of my pilot clients was Country Gardens & Nursery in Heber City, Utah, and they did not hold back. Every assumption I'd made at my desk got pressure-tested at their counter: how a card should ring up when the line is six gardeners deep, how balances should behave across seasons, how a busy team member sells one without thinking about it.

What's different here

I've worked at a company with more name recognition and more layers, and I know what that buys you and what it costs you. What I get at Rundoo is ownership — I scope, build, and ship to real businesses, and I see the impact in feet, not in a quarterly dashboard. Coming in with management experience didn't mean stepping away from the keyboard. It meant I get to bring everything I learned about shipping good software, and still be the one shipping it.

If that's the trade you're looking for, this is the place.