Derek Salama
Our blog series, Featured Tectonauts, highlights the amazing characters we get to interact with daily here at Tecton. Want to join the team? Check out our open positions here.
What do you do at Tecton? What does your team do?
I work as a Product Manager at Tecton supporting our Compute, Real-Time Serving, Data Observability and DevOps engineering teams. As a Product Manager, my primary responsibility is to help our amazing engineering team make sure they’re building the most impactful products for our customers.
What is something that you found unexpected after joining Tecton?
In my previous work experience, I was very pleasantly surprised to find how technically strong the engineering team is at Tecton, even compared to the great organizations I’d worked with before. I’d expected that a startup would struggle to attract top engineers, but instead the inverse is true: Our small size helps us maintain an exceptionally high hiring bar.
What activity helps you relieve stress outside of work?
Besides Tecton, I have a part-time job as a professional ball thrower. Our two-year-old Golden Retriever, Maple, really likes to fetch.
What’s a fun fact about you?
Most people find it shocking how much sports gear we can fit in our garage. Between my partner and me (ok, admittedly mostly me), there are:
- 9 helmets
- 6 snowboards
- 5 bikes
- 2 kiteboards + 3 kitesurf kites
- 1 squat rack
- and all the associated wetsuits, jackets, backpacks, etc.
What’s the most influential book you’ve ever read?
Why We Sleep is a surprisingly interesting book about sleep and the impact it has on your health and happiness. Every day this book influences me to, well, sleep more!
What’s the longest train or plane ride you’ve ever been on?
In 2020, I took a 14-hour flight to Tokyo, plus a 2-hour flight to Sapporo to go snowboarding. “But Derek,” you may ask, “Why would you go all the way to Japan to snowboard? Can’t you do that closer to home?”
This is why:
