Detroit Labs developer Chris Trevarthen stands guard over his fort. Below, Rachel interviews him to get the scoop on his background in programming for TI-82 calculators and how he’d compare Labs to a LAN party.
What’s your background like?
When I was in junior high, I wanted to be an architect. In one of my math classes, we had those TI-82 graphing calculators. We’d mostly use them to share games. So I started playing some of those games and there were typos and that bothered me. I figured out you could actually see the source code of the game, and went in and fixed it. From there I tried writing my own games; I wrote a poker game, and it would crash after three hands because it would run out of memory. They had some programming classes at school and I started taking those and fell in love with it. Having something you write that can actually work like other programs on the computer was an epiphany.
I went to college for computer science and it was mostly theory, very little of practical use. One of the professors was writing his own compiler. My last year of college, I got an internship. It was at a marketing company called Budco. We were in Detroit at the time. It was a really small team and I was writing HTML then, which was not really programming. I got to learn some web stuff from that and then I got back to school and used some of my new skills there.
After I graduated, I went back to Budco for a job. I was there for seven years. We were basically doing webpages with very little interactivity. Some forms, with CGI/Perl on the backend, but it was really simple. Then we started to get more and more web business and the requests were more and more involved. I got to learn a lot on the job about doing practical programming.
I supplemented my learning with books, like the 800 page Perl programming manual, which I used mostly as a reference. The whole idea of looking up how to do things online and doing online tutorials…I didn’t start using that sort of thing until maybe 2006, 2007. The resources just weren’t there. You either had to talk to people who knew what they were doing, or find your way by trial and error.
How did you find your way to Detroit Labs?
The tech community in Southeast Michigan is very small, and pretty close-knit. I met Nathan Hughes at Gale/Cengage Learning, along with some other people like Amber and Tim Taylor. I knew Brian Munzenberger from Budco, and he started at Labs and was just talking about how great it was. I took on a different position at Gale/Cengage, which was delivery lead. I kind of regretted it because it wasn’t tech-y at all, and I missed that. One day I was chatting with Nathan over email, and he said, if you’re interested in doing something awesome, you should apply. And I said, alright, I think it’s about time.
Before I started in October of 2012, I had basically just done Java development, and no mobile development. And that was fine. Lots of people at Labs didn’t know mobile before they started. It’s a slightly different paradigm, but it’s still programming. The big question was whether I would do Android or iOS. Nathan said, you know Java, which is what you use to write Android, so you’re gonna do iOS. You’re gonna do something you don’t know. And I thought that was awesome, the fact that they were expecting me to learn on the job.
How has that process of learning gone?
One of the big things was pairing. I paired heavily with Tim Taylor on the Domino’s project, standing at one machine and going through and fixing bugs and stuff. The whole process of pairing is different, in a good way. If you’re not the one who’s at the keyboard, you have to be listening and alert. So you’re always on, which can be a little bit draining. You’ll go hours and hours without checking email or an instant message. You kind of have to force yourself not to get distracted. And there’s definitely an element of trust involved, putting yourself out there.
How about the whole process of working with clients. Is that something you’ve had experience with before?
Pretty much from the beginnings at Budco, I was essentially dealing with clients. I would go on sales calls and be at the forefront with clients. One of the things that did appeal to me coming here is that there’s direct client communication. You kind of cut out the middleman of the project manager. I got used to that at Gale, where it was basically agile, even though it was all internal–you had direct access to your product owner if you had a question, and there’d be weekly demos where you could show progress. That aspect is similar at Detroit Labs. Now, though, some of the projects are very large, so it’s good to have a single point of contact on our side to funnel out a lot of the communication and serve as a unified voice.
How about Hack Days? You’re a pretty big participant, right?
The purpose of a Hack Day is to learn. A lot of people use Hack Day to work on their own side project or idea, or learn something completely unrelated to the stuff that we do day-to-day. I typically spend Hack Days working on client stuff, partly because I still consider myself to be learning something. Also, when you’re in the middle of a client project, it’s hard to just completely switch gears to work on something else. It can be jarring. So I work on an extra feature, and don’t have to make as radical of a switch.
I think there’s quite a bit of paralysis around having the total freedom to work on anything. It’s also hard to get focus. Coming up with the idea is fun, but if there’s nobody really driving it, sometimes it’s hard to keep that momentum going. It is definitely easier to have a structured project you’re working on. Even if it’s client work, I like to make sure I demo what I’m working on so that everybody at the company knows what’s going on with a particular project. It’s a good way to communicate and it’s also a matter of pride, a way to say ”hey, look what I accomplished.”
How have you seen Detroit Labs change in the year or so you’ve been here?
I think one of the bigger changes has been moving into the new space. Before, we were all crammed in with each other and you basically had no choice of seeing someone during the day–even if you didn’t interact with someone, you at least saw them. There was definitely that feeling of being all together. Now that we’ve got all this extra space, people are spread out, we’ve got our own groups going that sit together, we have the vinyl lounge….I don’t know if I can blame those changes on the building. That sort of subgrouping is going to happen when you get to a certain size.
But I think the core feeling is still there, in that, most of us eat lunch together regardless of the project we’re on or where we sit. We have our demos and our retros together. We’ve got our monthly outings which have a lot of participation. For the most part, we’ve been able to keep that sort of culture going. Obviously, it’s not as close-knit as, say, when there were 12 people here. But it doesn’t feel like we’ve been growing exponentially to the point where it adversely affects our culture. Having the careful hiring process that we do, where we vet for culture fit, is a huge part of that.
Chris looks on from his perch in the vinyl lounge.
Where does your interest in vinyl come from?
I’ve always enjoyed music. I remember looking at my parents’ records when I was younger and finding the album artwork so interesting. They had a lot of stuff from the 60s and 70s–Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, that sort of thing. I can’t remember what exactly the catalyst was for me deciding to get a new record player, but my parents and in-laws gave me their collection, and then just started buying stuff on Ebay, really crappy records, like 10 for a dollar. Right now, I have maybe 800 records. I built my own shelves too, so through the record thing I’ve discovered amateur carpentry.
At the old office we started talking about doing the vinyl lounge. A couple of us have collections. We thought it’d be great to have a listening room in the new space but the acoustics aren’t really set up for that. Justin ended up bringing in his portable record player, a few of us brought in records, Gary got a record cabinet from circa 1970, so it’s all come together. It’s kind of a free-for-all: anyone can put on whatever they want.
What kind of music are you into?
I’ve got a very open mind. I’m not really into hardcore rap or sappy country. I’m cool with bluegrass-type country though. I love classic rock, from 60s up through 80s, even the hair bands. Electronic music, electronic pop, techno. It’s hard not to be a techno fan in Detroit. I’m getting more of an appreciation for jazz and blues. That’s one of the nice things about the vinyl lounge–it’s kind of a library for records with a mix of eclectic tastes.
If you had to describe Detroit Labs in a few sentences, how would you do it?
The best description I can give it is…going to a LAN party with a bunch of friends, and yeah, we’re going to get some work done, and make some apps for clients, but have a ton of fun in the process. Everyone brings their computers and drinks too much pop and coffee. But hopefully doesn’t stay up too late.