We're on a mission to empower developers to focus on their work of creating software. Our customers trust us to help them run their software, and we work tirelessly to build great products that do just that.
Engineer with purpose
Our users want us focused on building mission-critical tools to help them run their software, not managing servers or spending countless hours thinking of the "perfect" abstraction. We actively work to outsource everything we do that doesn't core to our mission.
We won't be building our own database or hosting logging infrastructure in-house, and we never engineer for engineering's sake. If you ever encounter work that doesn't line up with this, you're expected to speak up and remind us all that the real goal is always solving problems developers face, and that code is just another tool to help us do that.
Form an opinion
We're in the first inning of a global shift in how people view their relationship to work. Many of the tools that will power the next generation of businesses don't exist yet, and they will look unlike the tools used today.
Here are some questions we find ourselves thinking about:
What would API documentation look like if it was built today? Would it still be a PDF sent via email or something closer to Google Docs?
Do payments still look like nine digits entered into a banking portal or something closer to Cash App?
Engineering at Hoppscotch is much more than just writing code. We care a lot about finding the truth and developing an opinion on what needs to exist in the world.
Sometimes this requires writing code, other times hacking together a mockup in Figma and showing it to users (and sometimes, you just have to get really good at searching comments on Reddit). You don't have to come in being an expert at operating this way, but you should have the drive to learn.
Balance speed and focus
We don't believe the choice between "move fast and break things" and "build it right the first time" is a binary one. Each comes with tradeoffs and requires a different mindset, but we believe the two can coexist.
Building a developer tool? Developers entrust us with their software and we cannot afford to make mistakes here. This means we move carefully, write design docs, run exhaustive testing, and don't take any shortcuts.
Building a never-before-seen API product? We bias towards rapid iteration so we can learn from real users and better understand what they want. We may have bugs (that we quickly fix), but in the long run this approach helps us build better products.
Own outcomes
We believe in feedback and working together towards a common goal, without rigid definitions of what you can and can't do. We'll come together and define outcomes as a team, and then bring intensity and urgency to achieve them. This requires a high degree of autonomy (no one is going to assign you a backlog of tickets to work from).
If you think we should have an engineering design review for a new feature, then let's set it up. Think we're not investing enough in our testing automation? Propose a better plan for the team.
It's up to you to determine the best way we can achieve our outcomes, and your ownership is not limited by your title. Hoppscotch in your company as much as it is anyone else's and if you see something anywhere in the company that could be improved, you should jump in (and expect others to do the same). We're all owners - what matters is the quality of the end result, not where it came from.
Keep experimenting
We want to change how the next generation of developer tools operates. That's a big goal, and it's not something we're going to achieve without constantly trying new things and learning from our mistakes.
Have strong conviction in an idea that's not currently on our roadmap? Talk to users, design mockups, build an MVP - whatever it takes to convince the team (and yourself).
We're also not afraid of throwing code away. We work hard at making sure developer productivity and velocity are high, so hacking together new ideas is easy. Build something quickly, get it out in the world, and learn whether or not it solves a real problem.
About the founders
Hoppscotch was founded by Liyas Thomas (CEO) and Andrew Bastin (CTO) in 2019.
We've had the opportunity to be early (sometimes first) employees at a handful of startups and have seen the ups and downs of scaling a business, product, and culture.