This is also the job that brought me to the Netherlands and to Amsterdam, my current city. eBuddy was one of the first successful app companies in the country, with very talented employees, and even though the products are no longer available, the team has continued to make positive impact at other companies.

eBuddy was my first exposure to the wonderful world of Scrum. This is the first time in my career that I participated in planning poker, sprint planning, retrospectives, and monitored burn-down charts on a regular basis. Software development can be fun! There was never a shortage of spikes.

My first assignment was to pair-up with another team-member to help improve eBuddy’s Lite Messenger product for feature phones. This was also one of my first TDD projects. I also contributed to the main iOS chat applications (free and paid), while learning a lot about great UX design. The eBuddy app was unique at the time with its support for a themable interface. These themes were downloadable packages and were consistently updated and improved.

While at eBuddy, I also got an opportunity not many people get — work on a WhatsApp competitor! The XMS messaging client was a fun and secure alternative to WhatsApp that featured fancy stickers, photo editing with speech bubbles, and really amazing media support with short previews for slow connections.

I definitely became a better iOS developer after my experience here.