Nate Shiwcharan has worked at Shipfusion since the beginning of 2016, and he was the first employee outside of the management team to join the company. Now celebrating his 5th anniversary as a senior developer, Nate looks back on his journey, talks about first impressions, favourite projects, and shares some of his most memorable experiences with us.
Happy Anniversary, Nate! How did you find your way to Shipfusion? What was your first impression, and how does that compare to today?
Nate: I came to Shipfusion straight out of graduating from Ryerson University in December 2015, and by January of 2016, I was one of Shipfusion’s first employee’s on the dev team. Shipfusion seemed like a bit of a garage workshop when I walked in, but quickly we tried to create this powerful system and get it up and running. The company and our software blew up so quickly, and it was incredible to see how we were creating new features while onboarding new prominent clients. One of the exciting things in terms of our trajectory is watching clients expand with us. When we started, one of our first clients was Rockwell Razors, they were small, and now it’s incredible to see their international reach. Shortly after acquiring Rockwell Razors as a client, other big clients followed, and since then, everything has changed. We opened new locations and hired several new team members. I was a support person when I first joined Shipfusion; it was more of a damage control role, but now my position has completely changed. Every day, I am building new systems and products to keep our service offerings up-to-par and ahead of the competition.
How has your work changed over the years?
Nate: It’s been a pretty full five years in terms of working on the dev team. In the beginning, it was just Mike Stock and myself for the first three years. The real transition came when we added Dean to the team; he is our Senior Solutions Architect. Dean has constructed so many processes from the ground up that have shaped how our software works and functions today. Our dev team’s culture has changed over time from ‘happy-go-lucky’ to a formal structure coding style, where we all work together to get goals accomplished. The flow we have right now is incredible, and we have our first female developer, Sachi, who is protecting us on the frontlines while the rest of the team can focus on building out features as needed. We are now a team of eight very talented full-time developers, and I couldn’t be more proud to be on our dev team!
How has the pandemic changed your role as a senior developer?
Nate: The Covid-19 pandemic has brought a real realization of what I can be as a developer, especially the amount of time I save commuting. It’s generally right now about an hour a day to commute, but now I have an extra hour to play with, and you never know what you can get done in that hour. The extra hour of spare time has given me more bandwidth to focus on being a developer and construct projects longer. The pandemic has helped prioritize my time more efficiently, and it allows me to develop features more.
What’s your biggest accomplishment?
Nate: I think my biggest accomplishment would be building the ‘Projects’ component. The ‘Projects’ software was a quick thought from our CEO Brandon Luft and our CTO Mike Stock. I was able to build it across the Shipfusion platform, and now it’s one of our system’s biggest core entities. There is nothing more fulfilling than building out something and getting to see it being used every day!
Where do you see Shipfusion heading in the next 5 years?
Nate: I see exponential growth every year; over the next five years, I see us tripling our dev team by up to 24 people to help support Shipfusion’s growth. The one thing that I love about Shipfusion is that we are a strong team supporting each other in every possible way, and that’s the one thing I think sets Shipfusion apart, it’s not just a workplace; it’s a family. I love working here because everything we build is in-house; we have never outsourced any of our system functionality like, unfortunately, many fulfillment companies do. Whenever there is a systematic problem, we deal with it internally, we deal with it as quickly as we can, and hopefully, customers can appreciate that about Shipfusion.
Congrats, Nate!
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