The People of Botpress: Michael Masson, Site Reliability Developer

Our team at Botpress works together to build the very best chatbot building experience possible. Get to know the Botpress team through our People of Botpress series where we highlight our team and the great work they do by talking about life at Botpress.

In this edition of The People of Botpress, we interview Botpress Site Reliability Developer, Michael Masson.

Give us an introduction! Who are you? What do you do at Botpress? Favorite Code Editor? Dark theme or Light theme?

My name is Michael. I am a software developer. At Botpress, I pretty much manage servers and site deployments. My favorite code editor is VS Code. Obviously, It’s the only one I use for everything.

I work on Windows but I’ve also worked on Mac and Linux in the past. I don’t mind any of them, but I just work on Windows because it’s the system I have at home. I just like using the same OS everywhere. Dark theme or light theme? I use the default theme! I usually think that the default option is the best one because the system tends to be optimized for it. Default themes are the best.

Also, my favorite hobby is probably playing video games. I play video games a lot outside of work. I’ve played a lot of small indie games like Hollow Knight. I’ve played a lot of League of Legends too in the past!

What does a regular day at Botpress look like for you?

In the morning, I do code reviews and emails. Then I get started on my main tasks. Sometimes, during the day, some people ask me questions about architecture, or any other subject to be honest. I help people once every two days and then work on my big tasks one after the other.

Everything I do is pretty much different which is why it doesn’t sound very specific. For example, I was recently working on an undisclosed project where we did some load testing. So, I worked on load testing by finding bugs and inefficiencies in our systems with the goal of getting rid of them.

As you can see, every task is unique. That’s partly what makes it exciting.

Tell me about your background in software development and how you came to be here.

I’ve worked at a lot of places. I first worked in website development in PHP. It’s been a long time since then. I’ve essentially steadily been changing jobs. And every time, I’ve acquired more knowledge and my technical skills have improved.

Before Botpress, I had a full stack developer job working at Eff's (Francois-Xavier Darveau, Botpress Head of Engineering) previous company where I had the chance of developing and maintaining production apps built on AWS. After that, I landed a job as an SRE (Site Reliability Engineer) in Montreal. And then, Eff asked me to join Botpress. It was a great coincidence since I was moving back to Quebec City. I was pretty happy to come work with him again.

Today, at Botpress I’ve been able to fine-tune my technical skills by building a great internal system with the rest of the team. I am using all of the experience I've acquired in my day to day job considering I have to be hands on from the frontend code to the infrastructure. This is what I like about my job – Being challenged constantly.

What’s your favorite project that you have worked on at Botpress so far?

I’ve worked on a lot of small projects. The one that I was really happy with was the load testing one. Essentially, I load tested the undisclosed project and I prepared the software of the project in advents.

When I finished load testing, it was pretty much what I thought in the beginning. The architecture of the load test was really well defined and I successfully did the planning that I initially thought of. Everything went well even though it took more time than I thought it would. I was really happy with the entire project. Big success!

Botpress CEO Sylvain Perron mentioned that the thing that’s really effective for developers is to give them tasks and responsibilities that are more challenging than what they believe they can do. Do you think that this is the case? Or, a better way of phrasing it is: Do you feel like that project was very much a challenge which made it a lot more interesting and rewarding once it was successfully completed?

When you have a use-case that is not like the ordinary, it just gets you out of your comfort zone and you have to think more about it. So yes, it’s the challenge that makes things interesting. The projects I like the most are the ones where I don’t know what to do in the beginning. This requires more planning, more thinking and more research to understand the problem. Usually, you find a surprising solution to these problems which makes things more interesting. When you get those projects right, it’s the most satisfying moments you can experience in engineering.

What is the main thing that attracted you to Botpress?

Usually, I am not attracted to a company, I am attracted to the people at a company. I knew Eff and he told me that Botpress had a lot of great engineers. He was right! The people at Botpress are really really smart. They can challenge you at anything and everything. You’re always improving because of this. It’s like playing tennis with a really good opponent. This is why I came here — For the people working here. I just really like working at Botpress. We have a really high standard for hiring people. So, the people that are here are pretty amazing.

How do you think Botpress and its technology will impact people’s lives and what’s so exciting about it from an engineers point of view?

The technology is really good. We’re working to make an impact in the industry by creating amazing software. Everyone that knows chatbots will know Botpress in the future.

Do you have any final words?

Always do your best, the rest doesn’t matter.

Michael Masson is a Site Reliability Developer working at Botpress. You can find him on LinkedIn.

The People of Botpress is a series where we highlight our people and the great work they do by talking about life at Botpress.

Read our episode of The People of Botpress with Sylvain Perron, CEO & Co-Founder
Read our episode of The People of Botpress with François-Xavier Darveau, Head of Engineering

What is Botpress? Learn more here.
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