It’s a Stytchiversary with Jeremy Kaplan!

What do you love most about working at Stytch? 

I learn so much all the time! I’m constantly trying new things to see how they’ll work, and that’s always fun. Sometimes the things are even useful!

What does a typical day at Stytch look like for you?

I try to consolidate meetings onto Tuesday and Thursday, so I do lots of focused work on the other days. That could be solving bugs, building out a new feature, or writing a spec for a future feature. Collaboration is mostly async, so I do a lot of writing and reading.

What’s been the most surprising thing about Stytch?

We’ve done so much with such a small team!

Stytch has gone from 0-1 in the last year, what have been some of your biggest learnings about joining an early stage company?

When doing something truly new, the best way to refine a good idea really is to just ship it and see where it goes. I knew this in theory because I’ve heard it tons of times, but it’s different to feel it myself.

What’s your favorite part of the Stytch culture?

I like our emphasis on open, async, written communication by default. I’ve learned so much by passively consuming conversations that other people are having, and it’s really easy to look back and learn why a particular decision was made.

Which Stytch hiring value resonates most with you and why?

Both of them! But I really like “be ambitious” because I believe that we can have (and make!) nice things if we try hard enough.

What’s the most interesting project you’ve worked on at Stytch?

You probably won’t get to see it (unless you join us ????), but I had a lot of fun building out our `apitest` library to make it easier to read and write end-to-end tests for the API.

How did you end up working in engineering?

My first year in college (when I thought I would go into bioengineering), a friend of mine challenged me to learn Python and compete with him in [Project Euler]. I ended up spending more time exploring Python than doing my organic chemistry homework, so I changed tracks and followed that through into software engineering.

When’s the last time you did something for the first time and what was it?

Biked to a wetlands preserve to watch birds through binoculars. I saw a heron pluck a fish out of a stream!

What’s your ideal weekend?

Video games, good food, and trying to build something in a programming language I’ve never used before.

What’s something you’re passionate about that’s not on your resume?

Linguistics! I’m fascinated by the way language evolves over time. Ask me how I feel about emoji reactions!