Sarah Eggleston

"I love solving problems and fit the developer personality - not sure why the quiz didn't pick this up! In 2016, I learned a new programming language, Ruby on Rails, and this unleashed my creative problem solving. I keep having ideas for new apps and tools and side projects I want to build!"

"I build administration software in the cloud for agencies and consultancies that track time, and need to bill their customers for the hours worked. Like discord, slack, or Microsoft Teams, a company can create their own account, and their employees log in to work with other users in the same company. I'm starting the business in \"bootstrap\" mode, so at the moment I don't earn a salary, I'm living off my savings. The joy of working for myself is that I am able to make time for side projects and exercise. "

"When I was 16, I was at an international school, where the final exam would have been International Baccalaureate - 6 subjects, mostly essay subjects, plus an extended essay (like EPQ). I wanted to specialise in maths, but my school didn't offer it. So I asked my parents to send me to boarding school, where I was able to take double Maths, Physics, Economics at A level. After that, I studied engineering at university, then entered IBM through the graduate scheme. For most of my career, I was a Java developer at IBM Hursley, working on a range of products and in different roles. I had intended to learn one language and product in great depth, but that didn't happen. For various reasons, I was moved around quite a lot. I didn't enjoy this at the time, but with hindsight, it had the benefit that I have worked so many different kinds of software - brand new to decades old, single developer to global team of thousands, database to CSS styling, with a bit of system administration. It turns out, I ended up with the full set of skills needed to build an entire product. One of the roles I worked in at IBM was as a consultant. I felt the consultancy administration software could be better. When I left IBM, I worked in a small consultancy, and I still felt their administration software could be better, so in 2018 I started to build consultancy administration software."

"I practice classical music, yoga, and I'm trying to spend less time playing computer games. I love reading about science, especially behavioural economics. I'm late diagnosed autistic, and starting to make sense of some of the very difficult social interactions I had at school and in my 20s. It has got easier as I got older."

"I'll spend my working day at the desk in my study. I have a trello project board with a huge list of tickets - work things I need to do. If I'm feeling positive and motivated, I might ignore the board and work on whatever I've been thinking about and really want to do, which might be the next feature for flow, or it might be a side project. If I'm feeling a bit uninspired, I'll be very disciplined and take the top ticket from the project board and work on that. With my technical background as a developer, I feel more drawn to the technical coding work, but as a founder, I need to take on sales and marketing too, which is the stuff I'm most reluctant to pick up. To help that, I try and remember to write marketing tickets as well as technical tickets."

"A Levels: Maths, Further Maths, Physics, EconomicsDegree: Manufacturing systems and management (mechanical engineering)Graduate entry into IBM"