What kinds of work have you done?
I've been a conservationist, a musician, an athlete, a student, a publisher, an author, an entrepreneur and a programmer. Certainly having a broad background, I would say, is almost a prerequisite.
My name is David Mercer, I'm a Senior Vice President of Software Engineering and Operations at Trilogy, and I live in Cape Town, South Africa.
What drew you to software engineering?
I think by the time I got to university; I'd gotten interested more in music. I finished cum laude with a double major in applied math and math. I'd learned a thing or two by writing books about programming, and doing my own thing.
I was approached eventually by a satellite tracking company, and that is how I got into working on heuristic software. My family's also been involved in animal conservation for about 20 years.
What do you do with Trilogy?
I think my job is - you won't be able to you won't be able to use this - but to get $#%& done. I hadn't ever considered taking a job. You know, I liked pursuing things that I wanted to pursue, and I was concerned that any job that I took wouldn't afford me that opportunity.
The Crossover job was enough to pique my interest and but what really got me hooked was the actual interview process that they run because they put in front of you some pretty serious technical problems and ask you to solve them.
The application for Crossover sold the job to me. If they're going to put these challenges in front of me and pay me to take on these challenges, which I would have gone and searched for myself, great happy days.
There's a massive range of products that I have to oversee and make decisions on on almost a daily basis and deep technical decisions. I think I think our baseline is what most companies expect as their goal.
I'm interested to stay at Trilogy because I want to see what's coming around the corner. I want to see what the next big challenges and I want in.
My name is David Mercer, and I never get bored because I got hired on Crossover.
