Sam Serpoosh

Hi, it’s Mike again with uktastic. I’m sitting down with Sam Serpoosh, who’s a developer who is from Iran, and now he’s working here in the States as a graduate student and he’s doing some consulting, excuse me, graduate assistant, and he’s doing some consulting. Thanks for taking the time to sit down with me, Sam. Thank you so much for giving me the time, Mike, I appreciate that. So not to single you out again, but we bumped into each other at SCNA and you had a very interesting story that you’ve moved here from Iran, and like we were kind of discussing earlier, here in the United States, and I’m sure in Europe, Iran is in the news a lot, but we don’t hear about people and community and tech in Iran as well. So can you tell me a little bit about what it was like being a developer back in Iran ? To be honest, that company was not very good and you know, it wasn’t very satisfying for me, so I talked to my friend and told him that, you know what, the things that they’re doing here is not very professional and I don’t think I can stay here. So he told me that I had this friend and they started, you know, kind of in a startup company, and they’re doing something cool named Agile and Extreme Programming, and I told, okay, that sounds interesting, and it was like three or three and a half years ago I guess, or maybe four years ago, and I said, okay, this sounds interesting to me, I’d really like to participate with them and start working with them, and I did a couple of interviews with them and they accepted me as a programmer there, I started as a programmer over there like three years ago. And when I was leaving, fortunately, I was like a programming coach and a technical consultant over there, so I managed to have a good progress because I was working with them like 24/7 on different projects and learning from different aspects of Agile and, you know, Extreme Programming principles, practices, and you know, all those interesting stuff like test-driven development and anything, and that was the start point for me to see what is Agile and that interests me so well. So it’s been like three years now, and I’m still much more enthusiast about those ideas. How did you go about getting information and support? Was there just your friends at the university, or were there user groups or anything like that? Well, the first introduction was through one of my friends, as I told you before, and when we get there, the only resource for us was the internet, and to be honest, the speed of the internet in Iran is nothing compared to here, you know? Very hard for us to have, like, you know, to watch lectures online and all those kinds of, you know, more heavier stuff on the internet. So we had access to some books and, like, screencasts and online lectures and all those kinds of stuff, but it wasn’t easy, like, just to give you the tip of the iceberg. We couldn’t even buy books from Amazon from Iran because they don’t provide the services in Iran. So the way we did it, we found someone in the US. We trusted him. We got the paychecks, and then we paid the guy more, and especially because of these sanctions and diplomatic issues, and, you know, the currency in Iran reduced dramatically. So a $40 book is huge expensive in Iran for us to buy that. But we did it anyway, and also we had to pay extra, again, for shipping that book from the US to Iran. So that was just for gaining access to some books on software development principles and practices. And we did it. So the same story again with the screencasts and all those kinds of stuff. So it wasn’t easy, but fortunately I was working with people that, you know, they were all passionate like me about these ideas, and they were really enjoying what they’re doing. So we liked it, and we did it anyway, but it’s nothing compared to be here in the community because to my knowledge, there weren’t that much of the extreme programming and agile going on in Iran. Like, we were almost alone, like, maybe in the whole country. You can find, like, 100 or 200 people that are doing these things so passionately, and the bad thing is you don’t have any kind of community that you go, you know, gather around, you know, having conversation and presentation and all those kinds of stuff that are going on here all the time, even in the smallest cities, but we didn’t have something like that over there. So we were almost on our own, you know, and also the internet resources, which I told you, it wasn’t easy to use. Right. Was there any issues with… With accessing things that might have been censored, or… Because I know that there’s some, you know, there’s news reports about… Yeah, there are filtering stuff on the internet, but fortunately, I don’t think we hit that issue in the scientific and technical stuff that we were, you know, looking for. Maybe sometimes if there were, like, some kind of a blog or article that has mixed content, both political and technical or scientific stuff, which you can find. Sometimes, maybe in those scenarios, we had to use, like, you know, filter breakers, software, or stuff like that, but for the rest of the parts, I don’t think so, because they didn’t filter, like, technical and scientific issues, they mostly, you know, filter, like, political issues. Okay. And what brought you here to the States? I mean, it sounds obvious, but what is, you’re here in the States to learn and study? How did you end up coming here? Yeah, well, that’s actually an interesting story. Well, it was like two and a half years ago, and I was working with this team, and, you know, we were doing a lot of practicing and reading all the time, but, you know, it hit me at that moment that in order to move so much faster and learn a lot, you need to be in the same room with a good community and all the people that are doing this very professionally and so much more passionate, because, to be honest, the company that I was working or the software team that I was working with, they were good people and they were passionate, but, you know, not as much as me, you know what I mean? Like, I was crazy about these things, but they were, like, normal, and that’s the main reason, so it hit me that I really need to come here and be in the community, because at that time, I was following all these professional people in the Twitter and, you know, reading all their articles, all their books, and watching all their lectures. For example, Uncle Bob, I read all of his books, I read all of his articles, and watched all of his lectures as much as possible, and a lot of other people, but I don’t want to mention all the names, of course. It takes me one hour at least, but yeah, that was what I was doing, but I thought that if I’ll be there and participate in these conferences, communities, and these programming sessions with other people and learn from their experience, because I’m in the beginning of the journey. It’s like my third year, and it’s nothing compared to people with 10 years or 15 years of experience, and it’s a long journey, and I’m in the beginning, so I need to learn from those people, and that’s the main reason that I decided to come. Here, and be in the community, so I posted in the Agile testing mailing list, this is me, and I’ve been doing these things, and this is my goal, I want to do these things, and I want to apply for my graduate studies to a university in the United States, and since I’m an enthusiast person in the Agile and XPS stuff, what are your suggestions? One of the people who responded to me was Mr. Matt Hoyser, which is a software testing consultant, and he’s a great person. He told me, “I went to GVSU. Which is Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I got my masters in computer information systems from there, and you can find a couple of professors who are interested in the Agile and software development, efficient and effective development techniques and practices.” So I thought that sounds really interesting to me, and I applied here, and fortunately I got the admission, and Mr. Hoyser helped me, wrote a recommendation letter for me after a couple of interviews that he did with me through the Skype, and I got the admission, and I came here, and to be honest, since I got here, it is so much easier to learn and move, because I ordered a book from Amazon two days later, and it’s in front of my door, but it took me like two months before when I was in Iran. You know what I mean? So, and a lot of other stuff, like as you mentioned, we bumped into each other at SCNA. There’s no such thing there, and that was a great experience for me, I met a lot of people and learned a lot from them, and I took a lot of good advice from professional people. I learned how I should continue this path, or what are the things that I should consider. So that was just like gist of what brought me here and how I got here. So after you’re done with your Master’s, are you planning on going back home and taking some of these community ideas and maybe starting a conference back in Iran or anything? Well, to be honest, I haven’t decided yet, definitely, but probably I’ll stay in the United States and continue working with professional people. But I definitely will write about these things as much as I can because I have a personal blog and I’ve been doing it even in the past few years, and I will definitely arrange some online meetings with the people that I know they are passionate about these things and tell them what are the things that they should do and start a community like here, even if it’s really small, better than nothing. And I start inviting people and hang out and give presentation about what are the things that they’re going through in their projects. And all those kinds of stuff, because when I was back in Iran, I managed a couple of workshops on test-driven development, kind of like a code retreat style of stuff over there, and also I gave a lot of presentation to students of the university and also a couple of software teams, to the developers, about these new techniques and better ways of developing software and did a programming session with a bunch of them as a, you know, just to tell them that these are the better ways to develop software and they are being used in most of the, you know, good development companies. So I tried to do these things when I was there, and I will definitely continue that probably remotely through Skype and with people that are doing these things in Iran still. Okay, and I’m just curious, what kind of, was it, when you were back in Iran, what were you guys working on? Was it, not actually what you were working on, but were you working with free and open source software or were you working with… Well, both of us. Well, that company that I told you about, we were using… We were using mostly the Microsoft technologies stack, it was a C#.NET developer and designer over there, but we were also working on some Rails projects with another team, and I have a couple of friends that they are working in a company right now that they are doing fully Rails stuff, and, but at that time I was doing both, I was doing a little bit of Rails development with some of my friends on a project, and also most of the things that I was doing in that software team that I told you about was in C# and ASP.NET with them. Okay, cool. Well, thank you again for taking the time to sit down with me and talk about your experiences. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity, I really appreciate it. Sure.