Many of the developers out there might have heard of Christoph Olszowka. And if you haven’t met him personally, chances are you may have already used some of his code like the very popular Ruby code coverage library SimpleCov or visited The Ruby Toolbox – a website about Ruby open source libraries which he launched more than 10 years ago.
"Chris' vast contribution to the open-source community shows how much he cares about empowering other developers. This mindset is essential for growing our technology platform and driving digitisation and democratisation in the transportation industry."
- Patrick Arle, CEO & Founder of MotionTools
Chris joined MotionTools in February 2019 and we could not be more excited that Chris is now taking on the role of Chief Technology Officer. In the future he will play a crucial part in building up our modular technology platform for mobility and logistics.
Chris is well respected for his “unbeatable work ethic“ (Igor Ladkin, Backend Engineer at MotionTools), his “pragmatic, yet inspiring leadership style“ (Milan Milojević, Head of Engineering).
We sat down with Chris to enjoy a Club Mate and fire three questions at him.
Why MotionTools?
Because I believe that we have a huge opportunity to develop an exciting and successful product together. At MotionTools I observe that we do not only follow a huge mission but are also building up a strong engineering culture based on pragmatism and joy of everyday work, agility and high quality standards, shared responsibility and thoughtful team collaboration. People here don’t shy away from any challenge and I believe we will accomplish a lot together.
What’s going to be your main challenge as CTO?
Balancing. On one hand we have to solve problems that are client-specific and on the other hand we have to always keep the direction of our own product. If we can manage this well, we create success for both our customers as well as for our own company.
Tell us of a step in your career that makes you proud?
Every team I have collaborated with and every company I have worked with brought their own qualities and challenges. My key learning from all those projects is that in order to be successful, you need to figure out together how to juggle the specific constraints and requirements of the company and product while maintaining a respectful and enjoyable work environment for every team member. Working as a team to break down big challenges into manageable tasks following a collectively designed agile process and keeping shipping is what I love about my job.
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A modular technology platform for mobility & logistics – what is Chris talking about?
MotionTools accelerates the launch of ready-to scale services such as app-based scooter, car and bike sharing service, ride hailing and pooling solutions and fully digital delivery businesses.
Our technology platform covers all the needed hardware & software components such as telematics, mobile apps and cloud-based fleet management as well as integrations of APIs, marketing, payment and accounting services.
Learn more about MotionTools here.
