A Day in the Life of a rideOS Engineer — Q&A with Mei Wan
By: Rideos Engineering
Tags: Culture, Startup, Workplace Culture, Engineering, Work Life Balance

Today we sat down with one of our Engineers, Mei Wan, to see what a day at on the rideOS Engineering team is like for her!

Mei pictured with her dog, Momo.

What do you do at rideOS?

I’m a software engineer focused on routing.

Describe a typical work day:

I like to start my day catching up on emails and cuddling with my dog in bed. Once I’m all caught up, I arrive to work around 10 am. I prefer to sit on a couch, work on my laptop, and enjoy the view of the Bay Bridge! Most of my meetings happen in the morning and then I have a big chunk of time after lunch that I use to focus on some coding. We get to pre-order our lunches from a variety of restaurants so I’m always really excited at the start of every week to pick my food since I’m quite a foodie and love trying out different restaurants. There are days when I work on a more design-focused problem, so I’ll set aside an hour to whiteboard some ideas with my mentor. I also work with some of our remote teammates in other timezones so I make sure that whatever code reviews come my way, I go over them before the end of the day so as not to block anyone.

Why do you like working at rideOS? What’s most exciting about your work?

I really enjoy working at rideOS because I have so many talented teammates to learn from every day. I also enjoy the challenging mix of algorithms and optimizations that I get to work on. Being able to contribute to discussions is one of my favorite parts about working in such a technically challenging space.

What’s been the most challenging in your work so far?

Routing is a fairly specialized field and there are many ways to approach this problem. I think the most challenging part is being able to make the right design choice that is flexible enough for the future.

What motivates you?

I really enjoy my work, but I also really enjoy living life. So I would say I’m more on the side of working on something I’m interested in to enable me to live my life doing things I enjoy!

Mei pictured working with two of our other engineers, Mason and Bernardo.

What are your personal and professional goals?

I eventually want to learn how to be a product manager. I really enjoy working with PMs that have a technical background so I want to gain enough technical depth and potentially be both an engineer and a PM down the road!

What did you do before rideOS?

I graduated from UC Berkeley in 2016 and joined Uber’s Map Services team where I met Justin Ho and Chris Blumenberg. After a year of working on routing, I decided to join a new team (payments) to expand my knowledge within software engineering. I really enjoyed the breadth of my experiences but when I went to an event hosted by rideOS, I thought the product was super cool and decided to jump straight back into routing.

Why did you join rideOS?

The team. I had worked previously with some of the engineers and founders while at Uber and trusted their mentorship, leadership, and direction for rideOS. I also really enjoyed talking to them and working on challenging problems together.

How would you describe the state of the industry today?

There are still so many unknowns about how the AV industry is going to be commercialized so it’s a really exciting time to be a part of this industry and help shape it. The industry has yet to peak and who knows which players will be around next year!

What are your predictions for the industry/market?

I believe it’ll still take another couple years for AVs to be truly commercialized and accessible to regular people. But rideOS is in for the long game and we’re constantly evolving as the industry evolves and helping many AV partners commercialize their fleets with our platform.

What advice do you have for future engineers or people interested in pursuing similar work?

It’s never too late to start learning! I only found my interest in computer science in college because I never had access to it before. Being able to work with a variety of different people and teams early on in my career really helped me form my work style and my identity as a software engineer.

Mei pictured on a trip to Banff National Park of Canada.

What do you like to do outside of work?

I have a mini goldendoodle named Momo that I love going camping and hiking with. I also really like skiing and scuba diving. And of course, food is a very important part of my life whether it be trying a new Michelin starred restaurant or cooking simple Korean bar dishes at home. Traveling lets me do all of these activities everywhere around the world while exploring different cultures as well!