S5 E25: Bobby Ross, Fire Hydrant

Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Episode • Nov 30, 2021 • 42m

Robert Ross, also known as Bobby Tables, has been into building stuff since he was 12 years old. Around that time, he Googled "how to make a website", learned from an online tutorial, and has been hooked on development ever since. He started making websites for people he knew in San Diego, which allowed him to facilitate his Xbox and Xbox Live needs. For gaming, he stuck to playing only Halo - and in fact, he already pre-ordered Halo Infinite over a year ago. But outside of gaming, he really loves to get analog - camping, being outside, and skiing.

In high school he did a lot of marching band, and continued the art in drum core international after he graduated. Post competition, he started working full time with a web consultancy.

Then went on to the next thing and the next, and he feels very lucky to have made the stops he made in his career, and the people he met along the way. He's grateful for his early work at an agency because it required him to move quickly, try out new things, and move on to the next project. This gave him a lot of rapid experience up front, which helped shape his skills later on.

Eventually, he was an on call engineer - either by accident or intentionally - because he always wanted to help solve the problem. At one point, he set out to bridge bootcamp grads into the real world of software through a video series. As it turns out, the product he was building during the series was much more interesting - and desired - than the videos themselves.

This is the creation story of FireHydrant.

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