#28 Dr. Andreas Dippon: Honest Communication and Delivering the finest Usability

Hello, I am Yuta Takasu, an intern at Beatrust. Whether you are a regular reader of “Beatrust on note” or a newcomer, thank you for finding this article. “Interview with Beatrusters” is a series of interviews with Beatrust’s employees, so-called “Beatrusters”. This time, we interviewed our Engineering Manager, Andreas (Andy) Dippon.
This “Beatrust on note” is an official platform of Beatrust that is mainly focused on having people understand our company and be interested in joining us. If you are interested in Beatrust, we have interview articles that highlight our employees’ unique personalities. For those who are not so interested in Beatrust but are interested in the workstyle of an employee at a startup company in Japan that aims for the global market, we have articles introducing our unique corporate culture and company system. Although most of our articles are written in Japanese, we are planning to have more information published in English, so please stay tuned.

About Andy!

My passion is to work on UI/UX related topics and Human-Computer-Interaction. I also enjoy designing systems to not only enable users to easily interact with, but also to enable onlookers to easily understand and follow the interaction. Before joining Beatrust, I was working at Rohde & Schwarz in Munich as a Senior Software Developer.

Private life

— First, please tell me what you do in your spare time.

I have been doing a lot of walking around in nature here in Japan. Most recently, I went to Matsuda in the spring season and saw a very beautiful scenery of cherry blossoms matched with Mount Fuji. What I like about Japan is that there is a lot of difference in nature depending on where you go. For example, you can take a two-hour drive to the inland regions to see the mountains and the trees, then the next day, you could go to a beach that is about the same distance. This is very unique to Japan, compared to Germany or Austria, where although there are beautiful mountains and lakes, you cannot find such diversity in nature that can be seen in Japan. I also started running once a week for half an hour and going to the gym three times a week. I believe that the balance between the time sitting in front of the desk and the time exercising is quite important, thus I try to keep up this weekly routine.

Unbelievable Scenery at Matsuda, cherry blossoms with Mount Fuji

How did you learn about Beatrust?

— Now, let's move on to another question. How did you learn about Beatrust?

I learned about Beatrust through my recruiter, who helped me look up basically any job in Japan that would fit my description. When I first checked out the home page, I thought both the product and the vision looked intriguing. As for the product, I felt that representing your profile with “tags” was a unique idea, which can provide topics that you could talk about with your colleagues. As for the vision, I was able to sympathize with it because of my experience in my last company, especially during the pandemic where suddenly many people worked remotely. As the usual informal interactions that appear naturally at the workplace did not happen anymore, people got more disconnected with each other and I thought that Beatrust can help bring people together even in a remote setting. In addition to the product and the vision, the work environment was ideal, as the company is committed to forming a fully English supporting environment.

Job responsibilities and future challenges

— What are your job responsibilities and your sense of fulfillment in your job?

Until now I was working as a Full Stack Engineer, responsible for implementing features. I am strongly interested in taking part in organizational matters, such as improving the development process. When working on the product, I always try to keep two things in mind: novelty and usability. In order to achieve this, I always try to find a balance between working on what is necessary for the product and bringing my own ideas to the product. I believe that there are different types of developers. Some are interested in the challenge of solving technical issues and writing good code, while others want to improve the product’s features which are directly impacting the user. I am the latter, thus my main source of motivation comes from contributing my ideas to the product.

— What are the future challenges?

I am changing my position from a Full Stack Engineer to an Engineering Manager, so although I am confident in my organizational capabilities, I will also be responsible for recruitment and personnel management, which is something new to me. Also, now that I am working as a manager, it becomes more important to be able to communicate well outside the development team, so it is increasingly critical for me to be able to speak Japanese in addition to English. Therefore, I am committing more time to studying Japanese, and hopefully, I can quickly be able to communicate better in Japanese as well. 

— Having organizational skills as your strength, and now taking the Manager role, please tell me the things you want to keep, and things you want to change.

I think what I will definitely keep as much as possible is the freedom of time management that the developers have right now. Everyone has diverse lifestyles, thus it is not practical to keep them at work from 9 to 5. On the other hand, I believe that we require a more organized roadmap and a clear vision of our product so that we can consistently implement great improvements to the product. 

Sunset taken at the beach next to Enoshima. A beautiful view unique to Japan

Important principles

— What are the important principles that you adhere to in your job?

To me it is very important to listen to the developers and take them seriously. I want to create an atmosphere where everyone in the team can give their honest opinion, regardless of their positions. This is not only in team discussions, but in 1-on-1 communication as well. Everyone has a great asset of skill and knowledge that they can share. Therefore, I always believe that in order to have the team members grow, we need honest suggestions to each other on, for example, how to code or how to improve processes. I want to create an environment for the team, where such communication is encouraged, and where people do not get discouraged by critical comments, but consider them as an opportunity to grow their own skills.

— I do think that it is critical to have honest opinions, but at the same time, it is extremely difficult to have such an atmosphere.

I do think so as well, but I believe that it is how people can grow. If you do not get any feedback from your boss, and everything is just given back with an “ok”, it just kills the opportunities to learn. The same goes the other way round too. If I was to suggest the direction of where the team is heading, it is important for me to get honest opinions from my team, to know if they really agree with the decision or have improvement ideas, which will help me in my own growth and decision making. My past managers were all demonstrating this attitude, which was the reason why I was able to grow with them. Thus, I would like to hold on to this principle especially now, when working in a manager role. To put this in practice, what I believe is crucial, is to demonstrate that ideas are heard by including others' opinions into decisions and clearly communicate why some opinions were dismissed. 

— What are some values that you hold on to from your experience as a developer?

I think it is by far the usability of the product. The users should be able to intuitively interact with the product. They should also be able to tell what each functionality is about. You often see products that have a brilliant idea and vision but fail to succeed  because of their complexity or controllability. Basically, the usability of your product has to be of good quality to get your point across. 

— What do you think are the sort of aspects that the developer can bring into a discussion of the product and the vision?

I think as a developer what you can bring is the technical perspective. Sometimes, the UX designer or the business side could bring a fantastic idea, but it is technically very hard to do. In a company, you need a good balance between the quality of UX and the difficulty of implementation. The priority is the customer, thus if we think of a perfect UX, but it takes two years to implement it, it is not going to work out. The developers, in the discussion with UX designers and Product Managers, could bring up such technical difficulties, and together find the middle ground where it still has a high quality UX, and at the same time, a manageable time to create. Honest communication is vital in such discussions as well. Collaboration of a wide range of people, such as Product Manager, and Customer Success is critical to view the product from multiple dimensions and figure out the best solution.

— What would you like to achieve at Beatrust in the future?

I would first want to see how my management role goes. Although I am interested in the organizational aspect of the job I also am interested in the product itself. Therefore I will see how these two combine together. I think it will be an interesting part of my career because depending on how this job goes, I want to think about whether I should pursue the management role or go back to focus more on engineering. However, the underlying passion would always be to create a good product that is very usable for the customer. Again, usability is the most critical value for me, and regardless of the position, I will pursue that.

A river called Sakai-gawa which Andy passes by for his routine walk and run

Beatrust's trust for the employees

— What is the most appealing part about Beatrust?

For me it is the working conditions and the work environment. The leadership in Beatrust respects employees’ private lives to a point I have not seen before in other companies. It is especially important for people who have a family and children, as there are some spontaneous occasions you have to take care of, which the company respects. I think that Beatrust successfully implemented a working style that allows a great amount of flexibility for the employees, which other companies should follow. 

— What do you think is the reason why the leadership is taking such measures?

I believe that it is because they truly believe that taking good care of the employees ultimately leads to better outcomes for the company. For example, if you have to take care of your child from 3 to 5 pm, you can decide to work earlier in the morning or late at night instead. This flexibility will let employees work with motivation, leading to better performance. Deep down, it is the leadership’s “trust” in the employees that allow such measures to be taken. This is a very special part of Beatrust as a company.

What kind of people do you want to work with?

— What kind of people do you want to work with at Beatrust?

Firstly, I want to work with someone who is intrinsically motivated, in other words, people who are truly interested and passionate. Although it depends on the people, I hope the people I work with are either passionate about their work or the product. Secondly, as you can see from the whole article, regardless of the position that person is working, I want to work with people who can communicate honestly.

The conversation with Andy was energizing. His passion for the product and the team was tangible, and his pursuit to communicate honestly for the best outcome was very mature and professional from him. I believe that this professionalism is what makes him an irreplaceable member of the company. 
Beatrust, founded in 2020, has employees from diverse backgrounds that collaborate and enhance each other every day. Please stay tuned for more interviews coming up. 
For those who are interested in Beatrust, please contact us through marketing@beatrust.com 
(Due to a large number of requests for interviews, it may take some time to respond.)