Test Double celebrates hiring Agent 00100
One of the things I underestimated when starting Test Double was how important it is to have a meaningful purpose for the business and a vision for achieving it. If you have no purpose, your people will inevitably show up for a paycheck and when the next better offer comes along, seek those greener pastures.
Purpose
At Test Double, we’re constantly trying to pull people into our virtual office who believe the software development industry is broken—so that we can help improve it, one person, project, codebase, and client at a time. In this sense, our mission is our compass. It ultimately guides what we do at a very high level.
Equally important is the company’s stated vision. It is ideally a 5-10 year view of how the business will evolve while still pursuing its mission. Our vision helps the team see what is coming and align their goals and aspirations with those of the company. It signals to everyone what they should expect as the company progresses and improves.
Growth
Almost six years ago, I stood in front of the 20 or fewer double agents at the time and outlined our vision of growth, one aspect of which was hiring our 100th employee by January 2026.
Today, we’re excited to welcome Jaquel Rogers Robertson as Agent #00100! Jaquel is joining as Operations Coordinator, and helps us turn the page on this goal a few years early. Sorry, no fruit basket or yearly supply of donuts or anything for being the 100th person through our doors.
As we look back on achieving this milestone of our vision, it’s interesting to see how updates to our vision have consistently centered around one thing—our people. We believe that great software is built by great teams. Rarely is the software the actual issue, it’s always the people behind the keyboards who are the barometer for success.
People
As a services-based business, we are nothing without our people. Test Double as an organization cannot succeed without hiring and supporting as many awesome humans as possible. Further, we’ll only ever have a miniscule impact on our industry if we’re a 20-person consultancy. So we are always trying to grow without sacrificing the culture our team has come to appreciate.
Our current vision outlines that we’re going to scale to 150 active employees so we can have a broad impact on our industry. We’re going to solve a more diverse set of challenges facing our clients so we can have a deeper impact on the businesses that we’re fortunate enough to work with. Further, our vision states we’re going to become a more diverse team of humans at Test Double so we can be better equipped to solve the myriad of challenges presented by our clients, and so we can be an example for other companies in our industry to follow.
Impact
Nowhere in this vision is a statement about revenue or profits. Believe me, we understand that these things are important, but they aren’t what motivates us. They are a very lagging indicator of whether we’re running a business that can sustainably continue. What motivates us is the idea of bringing more talented, diverse, and awesome humans into our midst, so we can have a more lasting impact on this broken industry of software development.
At times we have referred to our recruiting efforts as a developer rescue operation, and I think it still fits. We provide opportunities for software engineers to solve challenging problems, grow in their careers, do so in a balanced work week, and eventually reap the rewards of their efforts via ownership within the company. If this aligns with your goals and aspirations, we’d love for you to apply here and help us fix what’s broken in software.
Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t offer up our gratitude for all of the current and former double agents who have made Test Double such an amazing place to work. Please know that your contributions have helped shape our company and enabled us to evolve and improve over the last 10 years. A sincere thank you to the first 100:
001 - Todd Kaufman
002 - Justin Searls
003 - Jason Karns
004 - Andrew Vida
005 - Zach Briggs
006 - Matthew Boston
007 - David Mosher
008 - Neal Lindsay
009 - Kevin Baribeau
0010 - Daniel Thompson
0011 - Amber Conville
0012 - Kevin Pfefferle
0013 - Dustin Tinney
0014 - Josh Greenwood
0015 - Jerry D’Antonio
0016 - Michael Schoonmaker
0017 - Katie Miller
0018 - Dean Radcliff
0019 - Sam Jones
0020 - Dania Lieberthal
0021 - Adam Lukens
0022 - Ali Ibrahim
0023 - Steve Jackson
0024 - Joshua Starkey
0025 - Jacob Smith
0026 - Raelyn Bangel
0027 - Marc Peabody
0028 - Jason Grosz
0029 - Jeremy Fairbank
0030 - Megan Walters
0031 - Ross Brandes
0032 - Joel Helbling
0033 - Kyle Adams
0034 - Kevin Solorio
0035 - Brittany Moore
0036 - Marla Brizel Zeschin
0037 - Cassandra Faris
0038 - Juan Caicedo
0039 - Brooke Kuhlmann
0040 - Joshua Wehner
0041 - Kaleb Lape
0042 - Micah Adams
0043 - Lee Quarella
0044 - Christine McCallum-Randalls
0045 - Ilana Corson
0046 - Jake Yesbeck
0047 - Kerry Diehl
0048 - Dayton Nolan
0049 - Eric Weinstein
0050 - Cliff Pruitt
0051 - Jamie Phelps
0052 - Nate Kandler
0053 - Mike Jansen
0054 - Sara Jackson
0055 - Rob Vitaro
0056 - Daniel Flynn
0057 - Tommy Groshong
0058 - Tom Nightingale
0059 - Jason Allen
0060 - Elmar Valmores
0061 - Mark Miranda
0062 - Marshall Serlin
0063 - Eric Newbury
0064 - Stephen Vance
0065 - Stephen Rivas
0066 - Chris Caragianis
0067 - Alex Martin
0068 - Keith McCanless
0069 - River Bailey
0070 - Josh Klina
0071 - Jennifer Konikowski
0072 - Van Anderson
0073 - Joé Dupuis
0074 - Lora Abe
0075 - Anya Iverova
0076 - Kevin Truong
0077 - Tim Hogg
0078 - Carl Carr
0079 - Minnie Lee
0080 - Cathy Colliver
0081 - Camilo Payan
0082 - Nichol Alexander
0083 - Landon Gray
0084 - Viral Patel
0085 - Jessie Puls
0086 - Ed Toro
0087 - Meagan Waller
0088 - Henry Nicholas
0089 - Jon Grenning
0090 - Meri Brace
0091 - James Walker
0092 - Katie Macke
0093 - Aaron Frerichs
0094 - Kenneth Bogner
0095 - Mike Doel
0096 - Jesse O’Brien
0097 - Joseph Lozano
0098 - Matt Jones
0099 - Benjamin Chodoroff
00100 - Jaquel Rogers Robertson
