Meet the Orbit Engineering Team: Nicolas Goutay

Welcome to the Meet the Orbit Engineering Team blog series! We're diving into learning about the awesome engineers at Orbit and what it's like to be a part of the team. Enjoy!

Today, we're chatting with Nicolas Goutay, a lead software engineer on the team based in Paris, France.

Let’s start with two truths and a lie about yourself.

1. I used to work as a lock keeper
2. I coded one of my first apps inside a nuclear reactor
3. I used to be in the top 100 speedrunners on Castlevania SOTN

Which statement was the lie above?

The lie is the speedrunning one—although I love watching speedruns and learning about how folks achieve the seemingly impossible there!

As for lock-keeping, this used to be my summer job and it was wonderful: lazily spending my days on the beautiful banks of the Canal du Midi letting lovely tourists across the locks ☀️

I did code in a (disaffected) nuclear reactor: on the KTH (Royal Institute of Technology) campus in Stockholm stands R1, the first nuclear reactor of Sweden. The university frequently hosts hackathons there—it was a really strange experience! The app was a VLC overlay that helped you find and synchronize subtitles for the movie/show you were watching.

Tell us about your path into tech and how you ended up at Orbit.

I’ve been passionate about video games since I was very young—a particular favorite of mine when I was about 12 was the Resident Evil franchise. I became well-versed in the lore, trivia and the like, and wanted to share my interests with the whole world, so I set myself a goal to create a website. I imagined it requiring a NASA-like mission control panel with terminals everywhere barfing nonsense at me, but to my surprise it ended up being a fun pastime! 

I taught myself HTML and CSS thanks to free Internet resources (one in particular I am very grateful for was “Le Site du Zéro”, who pioneered free French resources around programming). I got really excited by all the possibilities, and the friendliness of the web development community, and I knew at that time that’s what I wanted to do when I got older!

Fast forward a few years, a CS degree and several years as a web developer, I realized it was time for me to try and give a little bit back to the community that I owed so much to. I started attending, and then speaking at meetups, then conferences, and then co-created the JAMstack Paris meetup. That’s where I met and became friends with Josh, then soon-to-be founder and CTO of Orbit. Orbit is at the crossroads of what I love: technical challenges, a dedicated, empathetic, and passionate team, and the online communities landscape—that’s why I was delighted to join as the first employee!

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

In the morning I usually take time to read, watch, review and engage in what Orbit teammates on the other side of the Atlantic worked on the day before—be it pull requests, documents or demos!

As a Lead engineer, I try to organize my time around what the team needs now, and what it needs next—that means shaping the next features we’re going to work on, reviewing open PRs or technical proposals, and pair programming (my favorite!). I also try to steer technical directions to prepare for the future, both in terms of scale and Engineering growth. 

Last but not least, I really enjoy doing support rotations and hearing about users' suggestions and pain points, as it helps tremendously in figuring out where our users experience friction and pain points—and ultimately how we can make Orbit better.

What’s a feature or project you’re most proud of that you worked on in the past three months?

Getting our Design System off the ground. I firmly believe dev/design collaboration is the key to delivering great user experiences; done right, it can also speed many things from imagining and designing new features to implementing them.

In the span of a few months, we have successfully built our Design System infrastructure and are starting to create and implement our first components—all duly documented and tested for correctness and accessibility. 

The Rails ecosystem around Design Systems is nascent but moving fast, and I’m glad we’re able to contribute back to it!

‍What’s your favorite thing about working at Orbit?

My favourite thing is that everybody truly cares, and goes the extra mile to make the codebase, product, community, and company better. 

Describe the type of person that would thrive as a member of Orbit’s engineering team.

A person who enjoys solving problems collaboratively, as well as one who can own a feature from start to finish. A person who empathizes with the user, their experiences, frustrations and objectives. A person who is mindful of the codebase, while being pragmatic when the tradeoff is worth it.

All in all, a person who cares.

What is your current favorite gem, library, tool, or anything else that helps you with your work? Why?

My current favourite is ViewComponent, by GitHub. Coming from a React background before joining Orbit, I always found that what was missing from the Rails ecosystem was a way to create reusable components in a way that doesn’t suck. What GitHub built there allows us to create, test and document reusable components we can reuse and adapt around the codebase in an idiomatic way.

The repository and documentation are top-notch, and I firmly believe the ecosystem around ViewComponent will all but thrive in the coming years.

Lastly, where can people find or connect with you online?

Find me on Twitter!

The latest buzz about Nicolas

We asked other Orbit engineers what it's like to work with Nicolas, and here are some of their responses:

“Nicolas is very strategic, and it helps to complement my very technical nature when we work together. In addition to that, as the first software engineer employed at Orbit, he has very solid experience in project architecture. Finally, he always thinks long-term in all situations and has a good way when it comes to mentoring.”

– Mashkour Abdel Aziz, Software Engineer

"No question is too dumb for Nicolas. He answers them all and makes you feel as if you’ve just asked the most intelligent question in the room—a real pleasant person, kind, and caring. And, of course, super bright and always ready to pair with anyone who needs another set of eyes."

– Malki Davis, Software Engineer

"Nicolas is probably one of the busiest people on the team, but he is always available to help. I really admire his availability and willingness to help others."

– Basile Barrincio, Software Engineer

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Like what you're reading and curious about joining the Orbit engineering team? 👇