Shubham Prakash, Director of Technology at Dabble Lab, enjoys making new discoveries. Recently, he purchased a sport bike and explores the surrounding cities and areas near his home in Bengaluru India. He and his friends spend weekends and time outside of work riding and exploring together. Often not knowing where they are headed, they enjoy open roads where they can test the speed of their bikes. Sometimes, they will point to a random spot on the map and drive there, without knowing much of anything about their destination. For Shubham, discovery is the best part not only of his weekend outings, but also his work at Dabble Lab.

Technology Director, Shubhum Prakash

“I enjoy working on something where I'm not sure how I’ll do that particular project,” Shubham explains. He enjoys particularly when he is presented with a project or a problem that is completely new that hasn’t been solutioned before at Dabble Lab, such as if a brand new architecture is needed. The reason? “I want to be surprised,” he said. “When I do the same thing over and over again, it gets boring. I want to be challenged with something new, especially when you are not sure or don’t know at first how you are going to do it– that is what interests me the most.”

Currently, he is exploring a new role in Project Management, leading two teams of developers for client projects. At Dabble Lab, the projects operate like an open source project where there are contributors and maintainers or leads. Over all of the projects is Shubum, who is supporting teams and ensuring all of the projects are progressing. He is directly connecting with clients to discuss projects, understand business needs, set expectations, define milestones and set schedules. Internally, he helps his team understand the project requirements and ensures that the team successfully delivers business results.

Technology Director, Shubhum Prakash

While he is deeply involved in current projects, Shubham also is helping to build the future at Dabble Lab by helping the team improve the level and quality of contributions to projects. He does this through sharing his experience and knowledge that he’s picked up along the way. However, sharing and helping developers through difficult tasks is nothing new to Shubham. As a Senior Mentor and Project Reviewer at Udacity, he tutored students in javascript technologies, providing technical guidance on software development via one-to-one video-calls, webinars, and instant messages.

The typical student at Udacity is a working professional who is looking to either be promoted through learning additional skills or technology or to enter into a new field all together. Shubham enjoys mentoring and helping students get “unstuck” in code and improve their knowledge of the technologies he has largely mastered. “I love how I can help someone…how I can enable them to do more…I feel that I am helping or shaping their lives in a way because through my help, the next course of their life changes. That is very fulfilling–seeing my students learn new things and get excited about it.”

At Dabble Lab, he continues to help developers get “unstuck” through collaboration. One method used at Dabble to maximize creative problem solving is swarming, which is an agile method where a group of developers will focus on a single feature or user story to complete the task. Brainstorming together helps the team get the most out of time and is an effective way to build community in a remote working environment. Of swarming Shubham said, “I really enjoyed doing that. Whenever we are stuck or feel we can leverage everyone’s skill, we use swarming.”

Technology Director, Shubhum Prakash

Of the projects he has worked on at Dabble Lab, it’s hard for him to pick a favorite. Each has challenged him to explore new subjects or technologies, which is what he always craves in his work. His explorations have taken him from his start as a front-end developer to developing the back-end as well. “Instead of being attached to one particular technology, it’s interesting to learn along the way. I don’t like to be specialized in one thing. I become aware of what is required for a particular project and learn what is needed to do it –that is how I go about it.”

Working on both internal and client projects, he has worked mainly with JavaScript technologies like React, Next.js, Node/Express, GraphQL, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, etc. However, he is willing and interested in learning anything really that is needed to complete projects. One project led him to dabble with Applescript. The ask on this project was to automate some of the manual process used to publish training videos on YouTube. Dabble Lab has a collection of videos on YouTube that are used both internally and externally to help share knowledge on the technologies that are being leveraged at the collective. Shubhum helped automate the process of creating videos from presentations with some of the videos leveraging text-to-speech AI to mimic Dabble Lab speakers in order to transcribe content to video training.

Shubham’s favorite project at the collective so far was a fully interactive animated Google Nest quiz game for TIME for Kids. “This was something I wasn’t entirely sure I would be able to do.” It was a quiz game with a lot of animation, and prior to this project, Shubham had not done any Web animation. The game worked like a slot machine, where different combinations were possible and every piece was animated. Since it was a game for kids, it had to be visually interesting. The hardest part about the game, Shubham remembers, was “working on the synchronization of the animation and the audio. The duration of the animation had to always match the duration of the audio and there were over 800 animations to the game.” All of the requirements and assets were provided, and so the task that Shubhan did was ensure that their ideas could come to life.

When asked why it was his favorite, he responds, “I didn’t know how to do it and also it was the first project that was at scale–so many people would see this game.” In the end, the client was happy with the game and Shubham added to his growing list of technologies he has been exposed to since joining Dabble Lab. And, he fits in with the collective as that is a trait that Shubham and others look for when interviewing and bringing in new talent for the collective: “we look for people who are flexible, who like to experiment with new stuff and who get excited about learning new things–that way, anyone can work on anything that is needed.”

Shubhum on the beach in Chennai, India

Although Shubham likes to be surprised by new projects, he is not surprised by the career his is currently pursuing. “This is what I planned on doing after University.” But, he has a long-term goal of being part of a start-up story, getting into the early stages of a company and building that company into something much bigger. His willingness to try new things and to adapt into the unfamiliar and learn quickly is ideal for small startups and for the collective. He likes talking to people and can connect to people very easily which is another plus in the column of the collective. Shubhum added, “the philosophy at Dabble Lab feels very different from the normal companies out there. We are not building a typical company and the idea that I can enjoy my work but also fulfill my needs financially and personally aligned with my goals as well.”