This was my first visit downtown again in… a year and a half. I snapped this photo right before walking across the street, and looked up to see this guy standing a few steps into the intersection, yelling “Hey!” loudly and repeatedly.
About a year ago, there were plans for Grubhub (my employer) to be acquired by Amsterdam-based Just Eat Takeaway.
I’m super bummed to see Shyamal leave, as he’s one of those rare devs that kicks out a tremendous amount of code, and it’s all high quality stuff. He’s also got a savvy ability to see things at the 10,000 foot level, and has a good sense for not just project deliverables but the whole project overall.
I was getting burned out a bit on some of our staple go-to options, and decided to splurge on something a bit different. I was looking up Chinese restaurants in the area, and happened randomly across Qing Xiang Yuan Dumplings.
Anticipating a decline in people patronizing local restaurants, Grubhub has decided to forego all marketing fees to restaurants for the foreseeable future, up to $100M. The thinking behind this being that, during the Coronavirus epidemic, smaller, local restaurants are going to be struggling more – and this action would result in more money remaining in the hands of local businesses, during this time.
Earlier this year, Grubhub had its first Hackathon. Our group (Team Braveheart) ended up placign second, which was an awesome thing to have happened. And part of placing second involved a significant cash award – which we used to fund a celebratory night out at The Aviary. Because why not?
Tonight made me think back to my Emmis Interactive days. I’ve had the good fortune to be a part of teams where everyone enjoys each others’ company, and folks genuinely like hanging out with one another – even after our work responsibilities end.
Today, I met up with Luis outside his hotel pretty early in the morning. We talked about getting him a Ventra card (for the CTA) and touring a few neighborhoods along the Blue Line.
This is about as far as I got with mine. My joke was that Sajit’s last gesture before he left was to leave all of us with a small bit of work that was impossible to finish.
Sajit’s been Team Lead the entire time I’ve been with Grubhub, and to say he’s been a rock is an understatement. He’s been the go-to guy for so many things, and his departure is really going to be a big thing.
While the team will evolve with this change, it’s bittersweet timing in that with Luis’ arrival we’re also seeing Sajit’s departure.
Recently, Grubhub brought him in full time and he was able to travel and live in the US officially. Today – he boarded a train, and Zohair and Shyamal met him at O’Hare.
Only much later did we learn that today was his first plane ride. Talk about big first steps.
Our team at work has started to read “Clean Code,” by Robert Martin. Several other teams in the company have done this as well (reading it collectively, and scheduling meeting times to discuss each chapter). It’s a bit like homework, but I’m actually really glad we’re doing it.
On the heels of our off site work event yesterday, tonight several of us at work had plans to stay late to play some board games.
Some context: the work our team does supports the Care organization at Grubhub. And the internal name for the application is “Carebear,” and our team name is “Braveheart.”
Most people, when hearing the name “Braveheart,” tend to associate it with the Mel Gibson movie. But really, it’s a Carebear thing.
Honestly, I kind of liked the fact that our trophy was imperfect. As that seemed to hold with the spirit of the hackathon itself. But it was quite nice that our company decided a replacement was worth it.