People
Chad Pytel President
Chad Pytel has nine years of experience in tech support and software services, and is a skilled programmer and project manager with expert problem solving skills. Chad is responsible for the day-to-day operations of thoughtbot — and also acts in an ongoing business consulting and project management role for our clients. He released a book, published by Apress, titled Pro ActiveRecord for Ruby: Databases with Ruby and Rails. Chad graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) with bachelor of science degrees in both Computer Science and Humanities & Arts (Drama/Theatre).
Jon Yurek CTO
Jon Yurek is an experienced programmer with proven problem solving skills and the tenacity to attack complex problems head-on. Jon is responsible for all technical aspects of the custom application development operations of the company. He was written the book, published by Apress, titled Pro ActiveRecord for Ruby: Databases with Ruby and Rails. Jon graduated from WPI with a B.S. degree in Computer Science.
Matt Jankowski Director, Business Development
Matt Jankowski leads thoughtbot’s business development activities, and is in charge of day to day operations for our New York City office. Prior to joining thoughtbot, Matt had worked as a software engineer for a high throughput computing consultancy, as webmaster for an entertainment technology equipment vendor, and as co-founder and lead developer for a publishing industry startup which uses community-driven matching technology to bring together publishers and creative talent. Matt holds a B.S. degree in Technical Communication from WPI.
Eric Mill Web Developer
Eric Mill graduated from WPI in 2005, and fled to thoughtbot in 2006 after a terrifying stint with an enterprise computer security company who never truly loved him. Nowadays, Eric is a Ruby developer, happy thoughtbot employee, and a regular face at the Boston Ruby Group. Eric is an occasional blogger, game music evangelist, and can sometimes be seen performing at ImprovBoston.
Jared Carroll Web Developer
The jare care has been a part of thoughtbot since September, 2006 — but has been writing code for about five years now. He believes that the language or framework doesn’t matter — it’s all about the developers. He lives outside Harvard in a huge apartment by himself because he “loves to get ripped off.”
Tammer Saleh Web Developer
Tammer Saleh is an experienced Developer and Systems Administrator. He has worked for the NCSA, University of Illinois, Caltech’s Earthquake Detection Network, and Citysearch.com — performing tasks ranging from Network Administration to designing Artificial Intelligence applications. He is the lead developer for the Shoulda rails plugin, as well as for the LDAP-Activerecord gateway, and he presented Angels and Daemons for RailsConf 2007.
Dan Croak Web Developer
Dan joined thoughtbot in August, 2007 after a period of Ruby on Rails autodidactism, learning largely from thoughtbot as they developed his pet project, National Gazette. Previously, Dan held a variety of technical positions at Fidelity Investments between 2000-2007, culminating as lead ASP.NET developer on an industry award-winning learning portal. Dan graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in 2004 with a B.A. in Political Science and a minor in Philosophy.
Kevin Burg Web Designer
Kevin is exquisitely passionate about web design and in his leisure time likes to “think about fonts.” He believes modern art exists and is collective, and that design should embrace utility. Kevin resides in the toxic portion of Brooklyn, New York and wishes he could own a dog.
Angelo Simeoni UI Developer
Angelo crafts unusually shiny apparatus for people to poke, prod, and creatively exploit. These days, he enjoys advocating web standards, typographic grids, and relative units of measurement. He lives with his wife and son in Salem, and can typically be found writing about interface design and arguing loudly about markup & style.
Mike Burns Web Developer
Mike Burns has been a Web programmer since before the first bubble burst. He has been the lead programmer on four startups — three while at Northeastern University — in fields ranging from XML database storage to real estate blogging.
Joe Ferris Web Developer
Joe found home at thoughtbot after spending several years on the freelance and consulting battlefield. He has been coding since he first laid eyes on a computer, and has been a Ruby enthusiast since he discovered Rails in 2005. In his spare time, he plays guitar and frisbee. Joe is an avid 3-letter acronym hater.
Floyd Wright Web Developer
Floyd Wright has been building web sites and hacking scripts since high school. After four years as an undergrad doing the requisite stints of PHP and ASP as the typical liberal arts “computer guy” (BA in Philosophy & Political Science from Seattle University), he emerged from his schooling with a hunger to create more usable software and chanced upon Why The Lucky Stiff’s Ruby pamphlet. For the last two years since that time, Floyd has taken flight on the gold-tinged wings of the Principle of Least Surprise. Strangely enough, life’s surprise levels remain high.
Amy Lemkin Business Operations Manager
Amy holds a BS BA from Bryant College and an MBA from Suffolk University. She brings 20+ years of in-depth entrepreneurial and business experience to thoughtbot. Prior to joining thoughtbot in 2006, Amy had owned and sold three successful businesses.
Dan Wright Systems Administrator
Dan is an experienced Systems Administrator with a background in Linux clustering, high-performance computing systems, and web and database services. He came down with the Academic Madness several years ago, and is currently working on a PhD in Library and Information Science and an MS in Bioinformatics at the University of Illinois. Dan lives in Champaign, IL, and cares for thoughtbot’s servers thanks to the magic of the Internet. He holds a B.A. in English Language and Literature with a minor in Computer Science from the University of Illinois.
Ralph Chief Evangelist
Ralph has been with thoughtbot since late 2003. He does not hold any formal educational degrees, but he’s a very courteous host and is well respected in the Boston robot community (we think). In his spare time, Ralph is an avid drummer and technical manual enthusiast.
