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Roman Kofman

Engineering Leadership and Culture

Roman Kofman is an experienced professional with over 15 years in web and application development. He excels in co-creating processes, guiding teams to excellence, and fostering self-sufficiency. Roman emphasizes actionable feedback, blameless retrospectives, and an agile, high-trust culture centered on inclusivity and continuous improvement. His technical expertise spans API Design, Ruby on Rails, Python, Java, Golang, Javascript, Node.js, Protobufs/gRPC, Mysql, Postgres, Redis, AWS, CI/CD, and operational support of scaled production systems. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the Illinois Institute of Technology and has held leadership roles at companies like Vertical Point of Sale Startup, Evidation, Lob, Square, Breadcrumb Point of Sale, and Groupon.

Highlights

Jun 15 · linkedin

Is anybody in my network interested in Burning Man? I have a placed camp, and some extra tickets; but not enough people yet. I love helping first time burners have a great time, so ask me any newbie questions if you're on the fence.

Jun 13 · linkedin

Choosing a server programming language used to be easier. 10-15 years ago, you generally had to choose one of 5 main options:

  • C++ if you are doing something really performance critical.
  • Java if you are a big team and want to move slow but careful.
  • Ruby if you want a pleasant developer experience -- and the point of your startup was domain / business modeling (Stripe, Square, Shopify)
  • PHP if you are doing long-tail web development, usually for WordPress. Or are Facebook and stuck with Zuck's choices.
  • Python if doing data processing. Or want Ruby/Rails but don't believe you deserve nice things (see also: Django).

Nowadays, you still have all of the above. But wait, there's more!

  • JavaScript/Node if you want to dream about shared code but don't understand the browser is a fundamentally different environment; requiring specialized skills.
  • Rust if you want C++ performance, but don't believe yourself to be an all-knowing-god able to prevent memory leaks and security issues
  • Golang if you want to be like Google, but fail. Or just really love Protobugs and hate your developers.
  • Kotlin if you are finally graduating from Java, or want the equivalent of JavaScript/Node, but for Android.
  • Hack if you're Facebook, and finally realized PHP sucks, but are stuck with legacy code.
  • Elixir if you're brave and want bragging rights
  • Typescript/Node if you want to be writing Java but all you have are "full-stack" JavaScript developers.
  • C# if you realized that Microsoft's take on Java is actually a lot better than Java, and has been for many years
  • Swift because why not? iOS developers deserve to be full-stack, too.

Did I miss any important languages? Did I horribly misrepresent them*?

Let me know!

  • ofc I did, half of these are tongue in cheek (but which half?)
Roman Kofman
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Location

San Francisco, California, United States