A company is only as strong as the people behind it. Our “Meet the Crew” Q&A blog series introduces you to the people behind the data.
Hometown: Stillwater, OK
Degree: Management Information Systems, University of Oklahoma
Position: Software Engineer
Joined Oseberg: November 2014
WHAT DO YOU DO AT OSEBERG?
I lead the application development team. Recently I’ve been acting as both the technical lead and manager, but we have an extraordinarily smart team. They say you should always work with people who are smarter than you. That is definitely the case here, so I’ve been working on moving my team into technical leads for their respective projects.
HOW DOES OSEBERG ADD VALUE TO ITS CLIENTS?
The goal of Oseberg is to make our clients’ life easier and allow them to discover bits of information that weren’t easily discovered before. Landmen, geologists, and others who use our product tell us that it makes their jobs so much easier. My colleague Casey explains it the best; he calls our main product the “Zillow for oil and gas”. As easy as it is to find a house for sale on Zillow, it’s just as easy to find oil and gas activity in our application.
WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR FAVORITE PROFESSIONAL CHALLENGE AT OSEBERG?
My favorite technical challenge was building the mapping layer in Atla. We custom built it, and that’s the reason it’s able to render so many data points. We’ve gotten questions from other companies on how it renders so smoothly. That was just one of the many projects I really enjoyed. I could work on it all day then go home and work on it some more. It was challenging, fun, and extremely rewarding.
HOW DOES OSEBERG SUPPORT YOUR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND CAREER GROWTH?
I feel like the moment I stepped in the door at this company, the pressure has been on to grow and to solve new problems. I’m constantly given new challenges. Oseberg always pushes people out of their comfort zones, giving them new tasks and problems to solve that don’t necessarily fit their role as designed on a piece of paper or their role based on their experience. Everyone here is expected to adapt, grow, and learn. Environments like this are incredible because you constantly get new challenges, and once you solve a few of those, you build confidence in yourself- you don’t feel like you have to rely on previous experience or education. You become more resourceful, and you become a better critical thinker. Oseberg helps us develop and improve by allowing us to overcome new challenges.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PART ABOUT BEING PART OF THE OSEBERG CREW?
Definitely the team. We’ve got a really fun group of very diverse personalities. We have Casey, whose life sounds like a novel, a series of adventures to get to where he is today. Then we have people like Steven who are brilliant and capable of tackling any problem. Or Joel, who is just an all-around great teammate. Everyone here also has the mindset of wanting to get along and collaborate well together. Having a team like that is pretty great.
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE CULTURE AT OSEBERG?
Our culture is quirky, inclusive, and focused on self-growth. I feel like the goal of the engineering team is to build confidence and support teammates, and I’ve personally felt very included and supported since day one. Jordan and Elliot have always made me feel like I was part of the team, and that i should be 100% confident about what I do.
WHAT ARE YOUR HOBBIES?
My daughter was born last year. She recently became my main hobby.
Before becoming a dad though, I enjoyed investing in the stock market, watching movies, running, drinking craft beer, building projects, and doing development projects outside of work.
CAN YOU SPEAK ANY OTHER LANGUAGES?
Javascript, typescript, python, scala…
WHAT'S #1 ON YOUR BUCKET LIST?
I definitely want to go on a low orbit space flight one day. Hopefully the space tourism industry takes off before I die.