Vancouver Tech Podcast Ep. 21: Rise

Vancouver Tech Podcast Rise

Welcome to the Vancouver Tech Podcast, now syndicated on BetaKit. In this episode, we start off with a discussion on the events that occurred the last week in the YVRDev slack, and why there are more dev slacks these days. An issue we discussed centred around the COC (Code of Conduct) and the division it caused with some of the members.

Following an event about BDD (Behaviour Driven Design), we reflect on how it is easy to talk about any organization and potential design decisions, but they’re always difficult to implement.

The guest this week is Tim Abdulla, co-founder of Rise (formerly PaySavvy). Tim reveals his programming past, and talks about the growth over the last 5 years, going from a dozen people to about 60 people this year.

The other Rise co-founders are Tim’s brother and father. He gives insight into what it is like to work with family, who is “the boss,” how decisions get made, and balancing these relationships outside of the business.

The discussion dives into the Rise tech-stack and why Tim likes to call it “services, but not microservices.”

Finally, moving towards hiring, Tim shares a couple of tips on creating a team culture that keeps people happy, even when they disagree. He covers some of the lessons he learned from hiring “brilliant a-holes”, and why that is a mistake.

Do you have an event we should include? Do you have an opinion on something we discussed? We would love to hear your feedback or talk about your meetup.


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The Vancouver Tech Podcast is a weekly show focusing on the growing tech industry in the city of Vancouver. Get caught up on the events and meetups around town, startups, new businesses, developers, designers, community programs, and news. Each episode includes an interview with an outstanding member of our community.

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