I’m Mike, potential Engineering Workstream Leader here. I’d like to give a bit about myself and work history.
I’ve been a software engineer for about 12 years, starting with native Android (Java/Kotlin) for quite a while at companies like Barkbox and Mozilla, before diving into web3 with React and Solidity about 3 years ago. Admittedly I have a heavy amount of front-end experience, but have done some backend Python/Node.
For the past 2 years I’ve been managing web3 engineering teams, most recently as Engineering Manager at Decent DAO, where I led the team building Fractal, a Safe-based DAO platform.
Decent’s ethos and tech is heavily influenced by Shapeshift. Fractal is a web3 React app using ChakraUI, so now that I’m looking at Shapeshift’s front end it feels quite familiar.
I’m a bit of a privacy nerd but I’m on Twitter at @michaelherbig, where I’m mostly an annoying reply guy, and Github at @herbig. I live in Brooklyn. In my off time I play a lot of Magic: the Gathering (Legacy mostly) and hang out with my dog Lua (IG @luathepup though I haven’t posted in a bit).
In any case, it’s great to be checking out what everyone is building here, and thank you for the opportunity to be involved! If anyone has any questions for me feel free to fire away.
Welcome Mike! I’m so glad ShapeShift is attracting such strong technical candidates, I’m familiar with your work at Decent although we never collaborated directly.
How would you describe your leadership style?
How do you plan to tackle inheriting a large codebase that you’re not yet familiar with? Do you have previous experience joining mature projects as a leader? What resources do you plan to draw on if you run into technical issues that you haven’t faced before?
What did you enjoy about the way that Decent’s engineering team operated? What would you have preferred to see change?
How do you think ShapeShift should approach dealing with the inefficiency associated with decentralized decision making? Do you think DAO members should delegate more decision making power to workstream leaders or an elected CEO, or that ShapeShift should lean harder into decentralization?
Is there anything else that you think that the DAO should be doing from a business strategy perspective to succeed financially?
Thanks again for applying @herbig, and happy new year to you too! I appreciated your excitement and hope you’ll consider applying for other engineering roles in the DAO that open up in the future. Thank you also for giving space to the committee to continue their search without distraction. While the committee can’t “install” a workstream leader, they’re doing their best to find the optimal candidate to recommend, and I believe are in a uniquely qualified position to do so. When the committee does eventually endorse a candidate, if you feel you are more qualified for the position, I encourage you to make your case directly to the community.