Today’s “Meet the Trulian” features Vice President of Engineering for Agent Platform Products, Tim Correia. Tim has been with Trulia since 2008, quickly working his way from senior software engineer to VP. Read on to learn more about Tim and his experience.
What’s your role at Trulia?
I lead the Agent Platform engineering team, and we focus on building products for real estate agents. Specifically, I help the team with designing and planning the systems and architecture of our various products. Outside of the Agent Platform, I’m also involved in a couple larger programs. First, I help lead Trulia’s Innovation Week, which enables employees to build self-driven innovative solutions to the problems we’re trying to solve. And second, I’m heavily involved in our engineering internship program. It’s been a huge success and I love the fresh energy the interns bring to our teams. (If you’re interested in applying, check out our careers page!)
What inspired you to get into your role?
The great leaders I’ve worked for over the years have really inspired me. From the start, I’ve been fortunate to work with and for people who are able to ship products, inspire their teams, and do it all with a personable approach. Instantly, from my first job, I knew this was the type of leader I wanted to be. When I joined Trulia, it was the perfect recipe of opportunity under leaders who embraced many of the same values I had developed. Since joining, the team here has really inspired and enabled me to grow into the role I’m in now.
What was your dream job growing up and why?
I wanted to be an architect and design homes. I even took drafting classes both in high school and college to prep to go into that field. I really enjoyed creating and designing, and this seemed liked a great way to be creative while also using math and logic. However, I wasn’t exactly blessed with artistic skills, and little did I know at the time that developing software gives you that same balance of creativity and logic… But, once I wrote my first computer program in college, there was no turning back for me. When you take a step back and really think about it, I did get close to my original dream job with Trulia: I architect software for people to find their homes.
If you could have drinks with one tech luminary – dead or alive – whom would it be and why? And, what would your first question be?
Steve Jobs. He had an amazing skill, he made products that are very powerful yet simple to use. I’d ask him about his process and philosophy on getting products down to just the core features. He seemed to always be able to draw the line between features you need to have and things that would be nice to have but that would get in the way of keeping things simple.
What’s the one gadget or personal tech item you cannot live without and why?
My iPhone. I’m a total sports, tech, and music junkie, and my iPhone feeds all those addictions in just one device.
What was the last movie you saw what – if anything – would you change about the ending?
Straight Outta Compton. I grew up on 90s hip hop and wish Easy E would have survived so we could have had more music from NWA.
What’s your proudest accomplishment and why?
Professionally, it’s helping to build an amazing engineering organization and successful company in Trulia. When I joined Trulia, the engineering org was about 15 people and we probably drank more beer than our revenue could cover. But, now we have more than 200 engineers in San Francisco and plenty of revenue to cover the beer.
If you could have one superpower what would it be and why?
Easy, “The Force.” What engineer doesn’t want to be a Jedi Master? You get use a lightsaber and play mind tricks on people. That sounds like fun to me.
If you could time travel, would you go into the future or past and why?
This one is hard for me because I love history. I can’t walk past a historical sign without reading it. But, I really want to see where we take this whole Internet thing, and how it continues to evolve and change our planet, so I’d have to pick going into the future. Plus, there will be real hover boards in the future, right?
