I thought I’d write up a post about a member of my team, Ryan Tomlinson. I’ve had the pleasure to work with him for the past 2 years, when he joined our employer as a senior software developer. Very quickly he joined the projects team and after a period working on other projects took up lead on the implementation of our Spanish website. It was here that Ryan really started to show the skill set that he had, and he helped bring into tombola an awful lot of the project management practices and software architecture that are very actively followed today. When I was awarded the web team lead role it was only a gnats hairs breadth between us on which would have been best for the role, and in all honesty we both were ‘best’ for the role, just different. He has since gone on to work on, and lead, multiple projects at tombola, always bringing his ‘best practice’ approach to each.
I’ve never written up a post about another developer I’ve worked with previously, though as Ryan now moves on to a team lead role at TopTable, I felt compelled to write this one.
We have spent the past two years with a relationship bordering on occasional violence because of the insults that we aim at each other, though fundamentally both know it is only achievable with the absolute upmost respect for the other – sarcasm has been a solid comedy mechanism between us, and I shall sorely miss it.
We have challenged each other during his time here on an almost daily basis, and both have grown better as developers, architects, and leads because of it.
He is without hesitation one of the best developers I have ever had the pleasure to work with – his insight, his motivation, his drive, and his experience has brought a massive amount of value to tombola over the past two years, and TopTable have gained an overwhelmingly solid team lead.
Really sorry to see you go mate.