Life of a Rocketeer

Name: Jing Chang

Position: Lead Engineer (Android Developer)

What made you say “Yes” to Bottle Rocket?
I interviewed with some bigger companies who would have very stern faces and would say, “Why are you here today? Why should we hire you?” versus Bottle Rocket, saying, “Let me introduce you to our environment first and see if you like us, and then we’ll talk about if you’ll be a good fit.” I personally prefer places not as uptight. It’s a very different mindset to me. It’s a pretty warm and open environment, and you can see everyone walks around with a smile. When I joined, I was 100 percent confident that it would be a good place to work.

What can you find at Bottle Rocket that you can’t find anywhere else?
I think its passion and transparency. Our CEO, Calvin Carter, gives a presentation to each batch of new hires about why he started the company and what his vision is. He’s like a pioneer – he started this company the day after Apple announced they would have an App Store. Another thing is transparency. Every week, we have a company-wide meeting, and the CFO (we call him Uncle Gary) gives us a very transparent financial report. As an engineer, I don’t really understand the financial portion, so for me to get exposed to that is one thing I really like about being here.

What are the benefits to Bottle Rocket being in the Dallas Region?
The first thing that comes to my mind is restaurants! We’re in the center of Addison, so there’s lots of good food around here. Large conferences, like the Big Design event, are often in nearby hotels. It makes it easier for Bottle Rocket to host meetups that we have, like the Dallas Google Development Group. The location is a pretty good add-on for people who are really big on learning more and meeting new people.

What does Bottle Rocket do to give back to the community?
Bottle Rocket is heavily involved in children’s education. There’s a summer camp for Coppell ISD where we teach kids how to do mobile apps. We provided some of the equipment, did some of the teaching and gave them resources. There’s also the Bold Idea, where we teach kids from third grade to high school how to program. Some of the Rocketeers – that’s what we call everyone at Bottle Rocket – will volunteer to be their teachers.

What is the company culture like at Bottle Rocket?
I like that when we work, we work really hard and we try to make it efficient, but when we play, we play really hard too. Some floors in this building are bankers, so when they look at us, they’ll say, “Oh, you’re from the eighth floor right? We envy you because you don’t have to dress up every day!” There’s also some video games here that people will play during lunch of after hours. On the ninth floor, there’s two big tables dedicated to board games that people will play during lunchtime, too.

If you could describe Bottle Rocket in one word, what would it be?
I would say we’re very passionate. We like what we do and we always try to explore and see what to do in the mobile app business because everything changes. We have opportunities to learn things that we’re passionate about, and we really enjoy working on things we make.

Photo Credit: Holly Nguyen