This is an English version of my career interview

Developers’ event “Developers Summit” to be held in Meguro Gajyo every February, so-called “dev-sami”. Various sessions will be held, but how can we use what we got there? This time I talked to Mr. Takatomo Honda of freee Co., Ltd., which had a career turning point as a result of participation in Developers Summit 2016.

As an engineer I always wanted to creating things with my own hands

- First of all I will ask about my career.

I graduated from NTT DATA with my new graduate and got a job from network engineer to sales engineer, sales, my hope was there, and I had various experiences. After that, as an engineer of the R & D department named Technical Development Headquarters from 2012, I was doing development of new technology and productizing it to the service.

In that department, I had opportunities to work with overseas partners, and I also did technical management and totally developing solutions. I was in charge of a wide range from planning of service development until actually commercializing it.

Among them, the process of making things by moving their hands was felt most interesting. It was a pleasure to be able to be used by customers as the thing that we created actually moved. Then, increasingly I became conscious of changing jobs, “I want to work in an environment where there are excellent engineers who have the same idea in the surroundings, who can concentrate on moving hands all day long”.

- While thinking like that, please tell me the chance of meeting freee.

My former senior colleagues participates in “ Developers Summit ” every year, I have been advised and started to go from 2013. So, in 2016 I joined the session of Hiraguri, our headquarters for development, as a trigger.

- I will ask the reason why Mr. Hiraguri’s session was chosen.

First of all, the title “live” is shocking. When I saw the introduction page of the session, I was quite surprised, and I became worried that “I wonder if I can return safely …” (laugh). However, there was something stuck in somewhere. It might be a hint of what I was thinking idly. So, I participated with a casual feeling “I’m going to ask you for the time being.”

- Please tell me where I was particularly impressed by being part of the session.

While standing position as Head of Development Headquarters, it seems that the engineer’s history is actually three years, and the programming is almost inexperienced, so it began to think with a feeling of death …. Under such circumstances, I asked the story that I was seriously committed where I could believe and realized that I am living as an engineer. I felt the tremendous amount of heat.

I also thought that I would like to do and I wanted to focus on it, but there was a situation that I could not get rid of it. However, I was impressed and thought about the way of living I devote everything to what I believed. “Do you feel that you are living as an engineer in your life now?” I think that I was strongly drawn when I turned back on now.

- If you are with this person, is there a sense of intuition that “I can get a feeling of living as an engineer”?

I agree. I was talking about Hiraguri making everything to the development organization and atmosphere of company called freee in the session . I thought it would be interesting to work under this person. So, I talked to Ask the Speaker (Editor’s Note: Question Corner to the speaker) and asked, “Well come see me in the interview”.

However, I thought that the environment would change by 180 degrees, so I was worried whether I could step on it. However, there was a gut feeling that if you are here, you can keep moving your hands and keeping value out as you are seeking.

- I did not mean that I wanted to change my job, because it is freee so that I was born a determination to change jobs.

I agree. Because it was not a big dissatisfaction with my previous job. There are also things that I was able to sympathize with the value standard of freee.

freee has five indicators of actions of value standards and value judgment. “Let’s offer something that has essential value to the user” “Let’s act first so that we can create moving things” “Think from the ideal without being bound by current resources and skills”. These value standards were in line with my policy of “moving by hands and creating valuable things”.

I felt the job change, SIer and the good points of each venture

- Please tell me what has changed from the environment in my previous job.

First of all, the scale of the product you make is different. I used to work on a large scale thing in my previous job. It was fun to make something that everyone knows, such as social infrastructure and the Olympic related business. Since the project ranged from half a year to more than a year, we had to plan properly and we worked with a lot of external partners so it was rewarding in that aspect as well.

On the other hand, speede is important for freee. Because our company’s products are made by engineers, we can immediately deliver value to users. As products are updated every few hours, I feel strongly that what I made is directly linked to the value of users. In that sense, I think that it has brought it closer to the place I had imagined so far.

On the process aspect of work, SIer emphasized promoting development as an organization to ensure quality. We decided the scope of responsibility for each team, and reviews were carried out thoroughly.

In freee, it is OK to receive reviews by someone, and it is necessary to proceed with all your own responsibility to the last. In addition, as a matter of course, it is important that quality is good and how to put out what has great value for users. You can immediately understand how much users actually use the released functions, and that is the attraction of their products.

As I was in my previous job, the development span was big and there was no feedback but there was a certain period of time to reflect it. It is possible to build firmly, but the speed feel is different.

- From the technical point of view, what is the difference?

I think there is an image that SIer has a lot of technical restrictions, but sometimes I belonged to the R & D department, there was not much restriction so far. However, in consideration of security management, I think that on-premise was preferred to the cloud.

In the case of freee, there is a policy to challenge whatever possibility to create value. Moreover, I think that it is a feature that there are specialists of various technologies. There are engineers who have a wide variety of backgrounds, front end, infrastructure, etc. It is stimulating. After that, as an organization, it is designed not to create big fence between the front end and the server side. I am standing in the position of creating a service in collaboration with an external partner named Business Development Engineer, but if you want to strengthen the test, for example, you may work with a QA engineer and you can easily realize what you want to do I think that it is environment.

Growth of 0.2% every day, it becomes big when accumulated

- Please tell us about Honda’s future career plan and goals.

I want to continue to be in a condition that I can do whatever I want. I feel like I am occupying the majority of my life on a weekday. I think that some work is not fun, but I always want to work happily.

Of course, just doing whatever you want is just a hobby, so I think that as a result of doing something fun you must be able to create value and provide it. The value in this case is for the user of freee, for the time being, and if it can do something outside the work. Freee is a complex work OK, so many people do whatever you like. I am making software separately from work.

- Have you always been trying to achieve your goals?

It means that it grows little by little everyday, is not it? I am thinking that if you realize that work can be done faster than yesterday, acquiring new skills, and the accumulation of such things will make a big difference.

As a specific numerical value, if you grow 0.2% a day, it will be calculated compostively about twice as much in a year (Editor’s note: 100 * 1.002 ^ 365 ≈ 207%). As a result, it will be possible to create value with twice the productivity compared to ourselves one year ago. Although it may seem like a steady thing, I believe it is important.

First apply what you learn

- What do you think Mr. Honda thinks is important to make use of what I gained by participating in Developers Summit?

Considering Developers Summit as a place of input, it is important to output and receive it. It is good to create something similar if it is a technical session, and thinking that it is important to first take action that I thought is good.

After that, question asking with Ask the Speaker is one form of output, is not it? When I was in Hiraguri, a long line was formed, but I did not hesitate to talk to Hirakuri side by side, so as I met this time. I feel that a small step will lead to the future.

Although I mentioned a little bit ago, there is something that I will first output to freee’s value standards as well. Although it is a story at the time of start-up, I heard that there was a history of moving hands earlier than suffering, “I will try making it first” because the deadline “must be released before final decision declaration” was fixed. From there I grew bigger and bigger as a company, so I guess it is true.