Building a More Curious World: Mystery.org Engineers

In a world where there’s no lack of demand for great engineering talent, what sets an opportunity apart from the rest? “I’ll jump in,” Ahmed, a Mystery.org engineer, offers right away. “I started my career as a teacher, and I really wanted to be in education. I've been trying to land this kind of job since I graduated from university, and now I'm here, helping millions of kids—not just a few dozen.”

With the foundational belief in the power of staying curious, as of early 2020, Mystery.org has collected nearly one million questions from children that often go unanswered or are met with unsatisfying explanations. And we’re answering some key questions of our own:

How can we create a more curious future by highlighting the wonder in the world for children? And how can we make it easier for parents and teachers to answer the questions they’re asked?

We gathered our team of engineers to discuss how Mystery.org provides them the opportunity to do what they love: building great things with amazing people and changing the future through children.

The Challenges In Front of You

The engineers at Mystery.org are an integral part of answering these questions as they tackle technical challenges driven by real-world problems. One example is lesson prep for elementary school teachers, often one of the most time-consuming tasks for teachers and a deterrent to teaching hands-on activities.

Robb, a senior software engineer, worked together with other teams across the company to take on the recurring challenge of how long it takes teachers to prepare a lesson.

He shares: “I get to build things from the ground up with people who actually want to build it the right way, solving a problem I deeply understand and making lives better for teachers and students. I’m a key part of the process, working with our design and product team to come up with the best solutions and figure out trade-offs together. I’ve experienced other cultures where engineers are siloed and just get told to execute this little thing or that. At Mystery.org, I own more of the product than just the final button: I own the experience, and it’s wonderful to have the freedom to do that!”

The engineers frequently get to experience the excitement of our customers and see the impact of their work. More than 500 teachers joined the Livestream announcing the new prep experience Robb worked on, and the positive response was overwhelming!

The engineering team also tackles internal challenges that have taken Mystery.org from ground zero to now having teachers signed up from 95% of elementary schools in the U.S. How can we automate and improve our previously manual A/B testing so we get the most accurate data as quickly as possible? What would it take to go from sending 100K emails to creating an email system that supports multiple millions of users? How do we make unit tests for our website faster, so that we’re putting out the best code possible and our users don’t have to find bugs?

The last point is an important one for the team—building the right things with the best tools possible. “Here, we consider having a healthy technological framework as a first-class concern. We can make decisions that large companies can’t because they are weighed down by a certain way of thinking,” shares Jon, who took on the foundational work of upgrading the team to Rails 6 within a few weeks of joining the company.

“We skipped a version, which you’re not supposed to do—but we pulled it off,” explains Jon. (“Jon nailed it!” Tom, a fellow engineer, chimes in.)

“What’s a fun project you’ve gotten to take the lead on?”

The People Beside You

With great tech and a team that supports each other, it’s easier to get tons done. As Eric, who has been on the team for 3.5 years, puts it, “One thing I am proud of, outside of the code and product, is how we operate as a team. Take code reviews, for example: in some places, code reviews can be rough—but here, we look for the positives. We hash things out together. We offer constructive feedback and encourage each other. When we pair up, we solve problems together.”

Chris, the team’s manager, agrees: “We’ve never had to come up with any formalized routines to get PRs reviewed. Everybody on the team just pitches in. As a manager, it’s fantastic that I never have to ask someone to do a PR review. Everyone here is great about taking initiative!”

Our ultimate goal is to ensure that the next generation of children grow up and see that it’s an amazing world we live in, full of possibility and wonder—and that they develop the ability to figure things out for themselves. That mission, with its focus on staying curious, is a bedrock of our internal culture, and it comes to life in the day-to-day interactions that influence whether you look forward to coming to work in the morning.

For the engineers, one benefit is that colleagues outside of engineering are curious and eager to learn about the technical challenges. As Ahmed puts it, “People on all of our teams have good instincts about software. I work with our sales team a lot, and everyone there has good instincts on how long something is going to take. I’ve worked at other companies where people have something in their heads that they want, and because they don’t have a good instinct for software, they make life miserable for the engineers.”

This interest in engineering and technology is partially driven by Keith Schacht, Mystery.org’s CEO, who has been a product person and software engineer his whole life. With his leadership and interest, engineers work with people who care about what they do. 

In Jon’s words: “Mystery.org is unique because we have a highly technical leadership, and across the company, people don’t make excuses for what they don’t know. There are no silos: people want to understand! That curiosity is one key reason why Mystery.org is a great place to work as an engineer. People here don’t think, ‘Well, I don’t have to figure that out, that’s for the nerds to figure out.’ Of course, as engineers, we’re problem solvers and we love that—but it’s great that we have shared understanding and that we respect learning and knowledge.

The Work That Changes You

When it comes down to it, everyone on the engineering team points to Mystery.org’s mission as essential to why they love working here. As Eric succinctly put it, “I like what we’re doing in the world.”

While great teams and fun technological challenges can be found in many places, what imbues every day with more meaning is the mission that’s served by the work the team does. “It feels better working on all this because of our mission,” elaborates Eric. “I like the fact that my kids will probably use Mystery Science in school, and they’ll get to see what I work on and what I do. I like that we’re trying to make the world a better place.”