You might not know this, but we’ve got some pretty fascinating people working behind the scenes at Prism Skylabs. So why not showcase what happens in the ‘Day in the Life’ of our employees? First up: Mike Fogel.
When he’s not climbing, running, or cycling – he practically lives on 2 wheels – Mike is leading the charge in getting Prism’s cloud service off the ground. Check out his story below. And remember to stay tuned, as we’ll continue to introduce new faces and show off what makes them tick every so often.
And if you like what you read and think you might have what it takes to join our growing team, we want to meet you. Check out our Jobs Page for available positions or send your resume to jobs@prismskylabs.com.
Now, more about Mike:
Describe your role at Prism Skylabs.
I’m leading development of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) side of our product. The Software as a Service side of our product is how we organize, store, and retrieve our data such that it can be efficiently consumed by and syndicated to a variety of geographically distributed clients and platforms. I like to think that I’m wearing two hats – one as a lead developer/architect, one as a director of engineering.
What does your work day look like?
My day starts out with an always fun ride down Market St. on MUNI (along with a few others on the team). I’m generally in the office around 9am, with coffee and a salad for breakfast – yep, a salad for breakfast 
My actual workday is usually a mixture of meetings, development, interviews and brain dumps.
Probably my favorite part of the day is the long-term technical planning meetings – where we think on big, long-term scales and try to paint a picture of how we’d like our software to behave in a perfect world. This is always an invigorating part of the day. The decisions and conversations that occur in our conference room determine the direction and shape of our business for the months and years to come. There’s no such thing as a futile meeting at Prism.
And as if that’s not enough, I’m usually out the door, riding home by 6pm.
With whom do you work on your team, and across other areas of the company?
As a small company and team, I work with literally everyone in the company nearly every day. On the technical side, I work most closely with Aaron, our design lead, Kingston, a web developer, and Noah, a senior developer. On the product side, I find myself working with Bob, Doug, Aaron, Ron and Steve to help define what the Prism product will be and how it will be used.
Talk about what you’re working on right now.
I’m writing up the ‘See’ page for the alpha version of our product. This is the browser-based application that allows a logged-in business user to browse through their video content and select what they’d like to see. In order to maintain a good experience on as many devices as possible, we’re implementing this application as straight HTML/JS/CSS. We’re using Django/jQuery/Backbone.js/ICanHaz.js to do our heavy lifting – the goal is to really only be writing Prism-specific application code. Ideally, our application will be a thin layer on top of more generic tools and libraries.
What’s your background and how has it helped you at Prism Skylabs?
I started doing web development for fun as an undergrad in college at Berkeley. I wasn’t studying CS or EE – rather I was focused on Astrophysics, with additional majors in Physics and Math. But web development really pulled at me – I think because of the ability to reach so many people with your work.
After undergrad, I was lucky to be hired on to OpenDNS as first hire. For the first month or two, it was just me and the CEO. The experience helping grow OpenDNS from two 23-year-olds and a pile of servers on a desk to a profitable company with over 1.5 million users was invaluable.
I left OpenDNS to get a Master’s in CS from Stanford. I finished that up a year ago, but on a daily basis, I still use concepts and patterns I learned at Stanford in my development work.
What’s unique/stands out about the development process at Prism?
We’re very task-oriented rather than role-oriented. We’ve a got a product to build and there’s essentially one BIG to-do list to get it out the door and into the hands of our users. As such, while different engineers do have different areas of expertise here, everyone ends up dabbling in all different areas of the system. Everyone has to read and write access everywhere, and input and help are appreciated throughout the system.
A friend of mine once described one of the pleasures of working at a start-up – “When I push, I can feel the company move.” That’s absolutely true at Prism, and it’s true on both the product and technical sides. Everyone has the opportunity to have a strong role in pretty much whatever part of the process they’re passionate about.
What kinds of tools do you use at Prism?
Sharp ones 
We use a big stack of open-source standards-based tools at Prism. Anything that’s not a core part of what Prism is – we should be using a third-party tool to provide that for us, not re-engineering the wheel again. One of our biggest technology choices was whether to go with Ruby/Rails or Python/Django – we’ve chosen Python and Django and haven’t looked back. We’re getting great mileage out of Django and actively committing back to the core.
To do some of our heavy in-browser lifting, we’re using jQuery and Backbone.js, along with ICanHaz.js and Mustache.js to do some client-side templating.
What aspects of your job most inspire you? What aspects have you found challenging?
My most favorite part of my role at Prism is the long-term technical planning. We have some difficult questions to solve – and the brainstorming sessions, where we can think of how we’d like things to work on six months to a year from now, are the most fun for me. It’s nice to define where we’d like to be, and then start creating incremental goals to help us get from here to there.
One of the most challenging aspects of my role at Prism is switching between the technical and product-oriented sides of my role. On the developer side of things, I’m concerned about keeping things simple and graceful. On the product side, I’m concerned about providing a stunning experience for our end user. When these don’t match up (pretty much all the time), I find myself with feet on both sides of the chasm, where maintaining a balance there can be challenging.
Any fun perks associating with working at Prism?
Yes! We have all the remote controlled helicopters, flying sharks, and Nerf guns you could want. We’ve also got the standard beer-stocked fridge and a kitchen equipped with healthy food and a coffee machine.
We make it a point to do Friday team lunches (and not talk about work!) and we’ve done a few off site activities together – a trip to Tahoe, our Christmas party at Bourbon and Branch, partying after TechCrunch Disrupt (we were named runner-up)…fun times.
What advice would you give to someone who’s considering a job at Prism Skylabs?
Send us your resume! No really. What Prism offers most of all is that we’re a small, fast, flexible company with a stellar team focused on a big prize. Prism isn’t a small idea by any means. We’re facing some challenging technical problems to get where we want to be, and if you think you might like to join us and help out, we’d love to hear from you.
Anything additional you want to add?
Our most playful team member: Poncho!
