Today’s “Meet the Trulian” features the Senior Engineer Lead for Agent Platform services, Greg Roberts. Greg has spent a number of years at Trulia, wearing many different hats and leading various teams. (Fun fact, Greg built the first Trulia Android app.) Read on to learn more about him and his path through Trulia.
What’s your role at Trulia?
I’m currently the Senior Engineer Lead for Agent Platform services. The team I oversee processes leads and sends notifications to agents when someone is interested in a property. Before that, I lead the Trulia Consumer Mortgage engineering team and was the lead developer for Trulia’s Android app – interestingly enough, that app launched as a Trulia Innovation Week project.
What inspired you to get into your role?
I was introduced to the Internet industry in 1997 by a good friend of mine. I was living in San Diego at the time and he told me about a company called CNET and said they were looking for “cool” people to build webpages. All I had to do was move up here. That’s exactly what I did, and I’ve been coding ever since. Back then, I was motivated by the idea of trying something new. Today, I’m motivated by the people I work with. I love leading high-performing teams on high-impact projects. Anything I can do to make this place better, I’m game for.
What was your dream job growing up and why?
I always wanted to be a professional musician or DJ. I have played the drums since the fourth grade and also spent many years DJ’ing electronic and dub music. I believe music is a way of life and that it can take you places like nothing else. I’ve always enjoyed providing the environment for such a journey.
If you could have drinks with one tech luminary – dead or alive – whom would it be and why?
Nikola Tesla. I’d love to hear about his stories competing against Thomas Edison, and whether he could foresee the importance of phones in our lives today, especially how small and portable they’ve become. The first question is simple: “How in the world can I build my own Tesla coil???”
What was the last movie you saw or book you read and what – if anything – would you change about the ending?
Trulia just took all its engineers to an early screening of Batman v Superman. It was a super fun experience, but I have to say I would change everything about the movie and pull source material directly from the Dark Knight series by Frank Miller.
What’s your proudest accomplishment and why?
Releasing an album in 2000 with my band, Otaku. The album is called Bitwise Operators and we got five stars from Alternative Press on it! To put a CD out that people actually purchase is an amazing feeling.
If you could master one talent or skill that you don’t have now what would it be and why?
If I could understand the complex math of relativity (specifically) and physics (generally), I’d be so stoked.
If you could have one superpower what would it be and why?
No doubt about it, osmosis via telepathy of complex ideas.
If you could time travel, would you go into the future or past and why?
I’d go to the past. It would be great to set up a BitCoin mining machine right when it came out.
