Written by: Lim Ziqian, Marketing Intern

A career in software engineering is a gateway to many exciting opportunities. No surprise there – we’re transitioning into a digital age at full throttle and nobody’s looking to take their feet off the gas anytime soon. 

Here at Quest, software engineering is a tough but nonetheless extremely fulfilling endeavour. Our in-house team comprises a group of incredibly driven individuals who are building an app from scratch!

About Quest: Founded in 2021, Quest is a digital marketplace connecting gig workers and customers for quick, safe and cost-competitive services across different categories. Within a span of seven months, we have served more than 7,000 users and generated over $100,000 in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) in peer-to-peer transactions. Quest is backed by the National Youth Council, Enterprise Singapore and Singapore Management University (SMU)’s Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. 

Quest’s three co-founders. From L to R: Matthew Wu, Evan Chow, Craig Choy. Photo credit: Quest

To get a better look at what goes on behind the scenes, I sat down with our Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and co-founder, Craig Choy, and posed him some questions. In this interview, he shares his routines, team management tips and experiences as a team leader and student entrepreneur. 

Now, let’s hand off the mic to him.

1. Before we dive into your work, can you give us a little introduction to yourself?

My name is Craig Choy and I’m a rising third-year undergraduate at Singapore Management University (SMU) pursuing a degree in Information Systems. In my free time, I enjoy getting coffee and going on long walks exploring Singapore.

2. Right off the bat, can you tell us what the role of Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Quest entails? 

Well… You have to do everything and cover a lot of areas. Off the top of my head, I can tell you what it doesn’t entail. One common misconception people have is that CTOs primarily do coding. In the early days of the startup, at least in my experience, that’s true. I did a lot of coding myself because we didn’t have the funds to outsource it to others. 

But as the business grows and we have other software engineers on board, I found myself shifting away from coding into a more managerial role. I slowly developed an entrepreneurial acumen and I’m learning how to see our product in relation to our overall business strategy. For instance, having a safe and enjoyable user experience on the Quest app will definitely help the business grow.

Another thing I do on top of coding is finding ways, as CTO, to harness technology in new ways to give Quest a competitive advantage and stay ahead of the trends. 

3. What’s it like being on Quest’s software engineering team? Can you give us a sneak peek into some of your routines?

As a team, we usually start the week by coming up with a priority list. We take stock of what new features need to be built but also what needs to be stabilised. If it’s the latter, then we will take time to slow down and relook at what we already have. In order to draft up this priority list, I’ve learnt that good communication is essential. Everyone needs to be on board with the same idea and vision. 

After this initial step is out of the way, we’ll split the work accordingly. Too many cooks spoil the broth – it’ll be a disaster if multiple people work on the same thing at once. But we still set aside time to come back together, communicate and share with each other certain learning points we have along the way. We used to have this intra-team sharing session only at the end of the week but gradually we began to have such sessions more often like once every two days. In case somebody else needs this piece of code, or runs into a similar problem, others on the team can pitch in. 

So I guess you can say that all in all, there’s a lot of collaboration and communication involved in Quest’s software engineer team.

Craig poses with some of the software engineer interns that make up Quest’s tech team. Photo credit: Quest

4. From a student’s perspective, how does your experience co-founding a startup differ from taking on internships at more established tech companies?

Honestly, I haven’t been on an external internship before, so I won’t be able to pinpoint exactly what I’m missing. But what I can gather from my own experience here is that I’m playing more of a managerial role (as a CTO and co-founder), as compared to if I were to go to a more established company as an intern where I would spend more time coding. 

Team management is probably my biggest takeaway from Quest. In school, we learn to code but not necessarily how to manage a team of coders. That’s one steep learning curve that I’m trying to flatten by learning on the job. 

And of course, there’s also the idea of accountability. In a more established tech company, I presume that I can enjoy more guidance. There are probably also mentors to catch me when I fall but as CTO here at Quest, there’s less of that and a lot more responsibility. But of course, ultimately, this is all just calculated speculation on my end, since every company’s culture and job scope are different.

5. In your opinion, what distinguishes a great software engineer from a good one? What qualities were you looking out for when hiring interns?

It definitely helps if the candidate knows the framework and the languages that we use to code, that’s one. In our case, we use Flutter and JavaScript. JavaScript is likely to be covered in university but Flutter only exploded and came to the scene recently so schools might not cover it yet. 

Some of our software engineers may therefore not be familiar with Flutter, but that’s OK, this leads me to my second point: initiative. Early on in the interview, some will ask: “What do I have to do to prepare for this internship?” The software engineers I look out for are the ones with this quality.

6. While we’re on the topic of team management, I imagine you have to review a lot of code as the CTO. Can you walk me through that process?

Sure! When it comes to reviewing code, I look out for two things: functionality and quality. I prioritise functionality over how the app looks. I mean, sure, it can look great but if the app doesn’t function correctly, what’s the point? This involves checking if one person’s code might accidentally override or interfere with another person’s code. 

It’s easy to pick out errors in code when they stick out like a sore thumb but otherwise, it’s much harder to catch. When that happens, what I’ve learnt is to really take a good look at what you’ve done previously. Trace your steps back, find out why it occurs. Maybe there are some incompatibilities between older and newer versions. Maybe there’s a broken pipeline. After diagnosing the problem, we propose a solution and test it. If it doesn’t work, we go back and restart this whole process.

The second thing I’m looking out for is quality. We don’t just write code for the sake of writing code. We want it to be reusable in the future as well. If we come back to look at it in the future, we must be able to understand it easily. It should be comprehensible and usable. 

7. What aspect of Quest’s company, product, or team interests you the most? 

Hmm… The team is great, obviously. Everyone is so in tune with each other with open communication and all. But for me, if I had to pick one, it probably has to be the ideology behind Quest. With Quest, you can potentially leverage non-traditional forms of service and expand your range of options. 

For instance, I often see people on Quest asking for designers to help them create artwork. Let’s say you’re in that situation – you’re looking for someone to help you design a logo. Normally, you’d probably have to rely on your immediate circle of friends. Or maybe you can go online and hire a professional to do it for you. But with Quest, your range of options suddenly expands. You get to tap on the creative potential of thousands of other users as compared to maybe five of your closest friends.

If you enjoyed reading about Craig’s experiences leading Quest as CTO and co-founder, then you definitely don’t want to miss out on these either:

• If you’re curious about student entrepreneurship, Evan Chow, our Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and co-founder, shares an exclusive day in his life in this article. He shares his routines, productivity tips as well as learning points running a startup while pursuing his undergraduate studies at SMU.
• Our Chief Product Officer (CPO) and co-founder, Matthew Wu, shares five top tips on product management. If you’re interested in product development or UI/UX then head over and read all about it.