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Arc90 is the first place I’ve worked where company politics played little to no role in the architecting of software. There are of course the “politics” of the clients we write code for - or more accurately some design practices that allow them to better leverage their own methods and employees (ahem, stored procedures) - but these constrains make a lot of sense. As the company founder Rich said, Arc has been lucky enough to experience a certain degree of autonomy despite any client constraints, and lucky enough to have a voice in the way clients run their business, helping them acquire a competitive edge through the utilization of software.

I believe these values are what are needed to run a successful company. In OO design pattern terms, I think the SuccesfulProductFactory is more important than any individual instance of SuccesfulProduct we produce, and this “factory,” or ability to churn out success is due to the culture at Arc. The basic elements of this culture are admitting when we’re wrong, being pragmatists (but not to the degree where innovation is stifled), and striving for cleaner and purer architectures we can continue to leverage and re-use for a while to come. In general, doing the “right thing.”

I’ve noticed that Arc90 feels a lot like a startup company. People get very excited about what they’re doing and work long hours. Waiting for the elevator at 12:30 to get lunch, you might see a group of four people clutching their iPhones, reading the last RSS bite that came through in the thirty seconds it took them to leave their workstations and walk over to the elevator. Un*x terminals are ubiquitous, and there are many people who can tell you how to run a set of obscure terminal commands to get your RFID enabled coffee machine to alert the paramedics when you’ve gone over the humanly safe consumption limit of espresso.

At the same time, being at Arc90 feels like being at a mature company, with decisive leaders who have the experience to make astute business decisions. Time is allocated among multiple projects, some experimental and innovative, and prioritized towards the things that will keep Arc in a financially secure position, so as to continue innovating. Some people are even working on software to help us better track and manage that time.

A true mark of a good experience is when you can take something back from it that continues to reward you. Whether it be memories, knowledge gained, contacts made, or something you’ve created that is useful. At Arc90 I feel I’ve accomplished all four of these things. The framework I built in Java with fellow intern Alex, HARE (Hibernate-based Arc90 RESTlet Extension), whose name is inspired by RARE (RARE is Arc90’s Restlet Extension), I plan to use in some of my own projects (an automated trading platform is one). I would be very excited to see this framework live on and flourish, and the possibility that I will continue to maintain and extend this framework while using it in my own projects is another reason why reusable solutions, while initially more time consuming, end up beating non-reusable ones.

Tomorrow is my last day, and I would like to thank everyone I’ve worked with at Arc for making it a fun place to work.

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