Eric Streeper is one of Revelry’s newest software engineers – and one of only a few Revelers who reside outside of Louisiana.
How would you describe yourself in a few sentences? I’m a problem solver, entrepreneur, software developer, and enabler of people. I’m drawn to the places where art and software overlap, whether that’s writing code to power the LEDs in a friend’s art installation or building a platform for thousands of indie filmmakers to release their films directly to audiences. I love building things for the web, and am a strong believer in its power as a universal computing platform.
Where are you from? I spend a lot of time working from different places, but my home base is Santa Fe, New Mexico, a small city in the high desert nestled at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. I’ve also lived in Los Angeles and Denver in the U.S., and Mexicali and Monterrey in Mexico.
What was the path that got you to Revelry? I’ve had a winding career pathway, from working as a music royalty analyst and providing IT consulting for small and medium businesses, to setting up infrastructure at film studios and, most recently, founding an indie-film streaming service called Xerb. I initially heard about Revelry through the Elixir language community.
What stood out about Revelry that drove your decision to join the company? Its commitment to startups. Aside from helping a lot of high-growth companies build out their products, I saw that many of the people working here are founders themselves, and Revelry even has a venture studio, where they invest in and help build companies. I wanted to be aligned with people that have a focus on building great products.
What’s the best thing about your job? I love the people here and the culture that Revelry has built, which is not easy to create in a largely remote environment. Communication happens out in the open, which creates a strong sense of collaboration and trust, and lets knowledge transfer freely throughout the organization. There is also a serious commitment to work-life balance, which gives me time to work on my perhaps too-numerous projects.
Tell me more about your interests. I like playing all sorts of different instruments: guitar, trombone, bass, drums, melodica, and really anything else I can get my hands on. We have a great karaoke setup at our house with lasers, disco ball, fog, and party lights, and will have some people singing while other people play an assortment of instruments, with no experience necessary. I also like to explore new places and meet new people, organize software and film meetups, and play soccer or Magic: the Gathering with friends.
What’s your favorite emoji in the Revelry Slack? There are so many emoji that I’m barely surprised anymore when I find that of course there are emoji for :hypnotoad:, :guy_fieri_chef_kiss: or :tuskenraider:, but my favorites are the many that have been created featuring other Revelers.
What non-digital product could you not live without? Our metal spatula. On more than one occasion, I’ve decided not to cook because it was in the dishwasher.
What is your favorite productivity hack? Naps. If I’m reeling tired, nothing can turn around my day like a 20-minute nap at lunch. Even better than naps is getting enough sleep.
Who inspires you? Why? Tony Hsieh of Zappos for showing that it was possible to build a successful company by being great to your customers and your people, Melanie Perkins of Canva for democratizing design, relentless product focus, and perseverance, and Barbara T., a high school technology teacher in Santa Fe who will stop at nothing to make sure her students get the skills and tools needed to succeed.
What could you talk about for days if you climbed up on your soapbox? The creator economy, why it’s broken, and how to fix it.
What is your programming language of choice? For my own web projects, Elixir with the Phoenix framework. Elixir is built on top of Erlang, a language designed in the 80’s for telephone networks which had to be highly available, concurrent, and distributed, which it turns out are also really important aspects of building reliable, scalable web applications. At a hack night usually Python because it’s easier for others to get started with and is versatile and simple. On the frontend, TypeScript has made me love JavaScript again and lets me build great interactivity in the browser.
Which of your daily work tools is your favorite? The terminal, I never like to leave it! I use tmux to split it up into panes and windows, vim for text editing, and a bunch of CLI utilities for everything else. After working in it for a while it started to become easier to do most things on the command line, and it makes it easier for me to understand how my system works.
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