By Korinne Condie
A Tale of Two Isaacs
Today we are introducing another two new team members! Last week we focused on our new Senior DevOps Engineer, Dave Potter, and our new Technical Project Manager, Sarah Crank. This week we are introducing two new engineers. In a small company of 15 people, you would think it would be rare to find two people with the same name, much less two developers. But leave it to us to find them — Isaac Nelson and Isaac Doub — the two newest developers in the Kaseware family. We quickly had to resort to nicknames, which have caught on as fast as they have learned the system and started making big contributions to our team.
Now let’s get to know more about these two outstanding team members!
Isaac Nelson
Junior Software Engineer
In Isaac’s words: “I was born in Salt Lake City, and with no relatives within 100 miles, it was just our small family of four for most of my childhood. Growing up it was all about sports. I was a swimmer all through high school (the shorter the race, the better I was), going to state in both the 50M freestyle and the 4×4.
Other than sports, it was LEGOs. Every birthday, every holiday, every time I saved enough allowance, it was a new LEGO set. To this day I can still remember my favorite set I got when I was eight – “Lego Space Life On Mars Aero Tube Hanger” (and for $400 I can have it again from eBay).
After graduation from high school, I moved to Denver to attend the University of Denver. I wanted to stay close to home but far enough that my parents couldn’t pop in my dorm room whenever they wanted, so Denver seemed like the perfect option. I double majored in Political Science and Applied Computing, and was very active on the curling team and in the art community (I even had a couple of art shows).
After graduation in 2019, I spent some time buying and fixing up a house, and then started the long, arduous job search while working on my personal website (I built it in two different Javascript frameworks, both to keep up/learn new skills and as a way to highlight my art). I saw Kaseware’s job posting, and with my degree in political science I was intrigued by the job and the ties to government customers. It was during my first interview, when I heard about how the team was small (like a family) and heard that the story of the founders (how can you beat 3 ex FBI agents that also code) that I knew this was where I wanted to work.
I am still baffled by the amount of work the founders have put into this application. It is mind-boggling how much overall functionality it provides. Relatively new to this field, I am still wrapping my mind around and coming to terms with the goliath that is Kaseware’s code base. My time here has been a mental rollercoaster – the first couple of weeks was like ‘I got this, I can learn this’, and then 1-2 months in, ‘I am never going to learn this,’ and now it has leveled out as I learned more and more and have started working on stories that are a little more complicated.
Outside of work, I play – what the team affectionately refers to as ‘“nerd games’ – Warhammer 40k (which for those who do not know is a futuristic, dystopian tabletop war game). Otherwise, I play the flute, paint, and go for runs with my dog Sunny.
As for what the next few years hold, I am looking forward to absorbing as much knowledge as I can, over the next days, months and years as I grow my knowledge of the Kaseware application.”
Isaac Doub
Senior Software Engineer
“My parents are both missionaries, so I was born overseas and have lived all over the world. The locations/countries I have lived in is extensive enough to justify a long bulleted list:
Born in Jordan
Moved to Wheaton, Illinois for 1 year when I was three where my dad did a masters in International Communications.
Over to Egypt for seven years
Then on to Carlisle, England for seven years
Then I travelled for a year spending three months in Thailand, Uganda and Austria
Then I moved to Bristol in the South of England for five years (including college)
Then the five hours back north to Carlisle for about a year and a half
And finally, to Denver in 2015.
Before deciding to move back to America, I went to college at the University of Bristol, where I started my degree in aeronautical engineering. Towards the end of my first year, I realized that airplanes and flight was a passion, but not something I wanted to do as a full time job. I remember sitting in a Engineering Math class learning how to integrate over 9 dimensions to model the airflow over a wing and thinking, “this is painful!” So I switched majors to computer science which is far more practical and hands on (despite being digital) and have enjoyed it ever since.
After college, I freelanced for a bit back in Carlisle and then did a 9 month contract for a financial services company. Even at that point I was planning on moving back to the United States as I was really interested in starting my own company or working for a small startup and England is not as good a place for startups as the US is.
So in 2015, with only $2,000 and no job, I left England and moved to Denver, Colorado (to a country where I was a citizen but had not lived in since I was three years old). I had a few options in mind, but I liked the mountains and had friends in Colorado who said I could crash with them until I got a job, and so Denver it was.
Over the next couple of years I met my wife, got married back in England, had our first child Kaleb and bought our first house. I met my wife (who is Paraguayan, born in the US, but moved back to Paraguay at a young age) while she was doing an internship with the law firm at Furniture Row in between finishing her 6 year law degree in Paraguay. We’re looking forward to our second little boy in August.
During this whole time I was working my way up the ladder as a full stack developer at a company that had just transitioned out of a startup. I had actually applied as a backend developer, but when I mentioned I had some frontend experience, they interviewed me for both positions (it was a very long day) and hired me as a full stack developer. Unfortunately, after about 4 years, the company went through a number of transitions, acquisitions and reorgs. New CEO, new CPO and new stakeholders meant a number of cultural changes that left a lot of people by the wayside. I stuck it out as long as I could hoping things would improve, but after watching my friends walk out the door, or being forced out, I decided it was probably best if I started looking for a new opportunity.
I barely had to do any job hunting, however, as Kaseware reached out to me just a couple days after I started looking and asked if I would be interested in a software engineer position at their company. I like startups and I liked smaller companies, so it seemed like a great opportunity. I was a little hesitant at first, I liked that Kaseware was in a niche market and stable but what sealed the deal was my conversation with the CEO, Dorian. The culture was more about “Let’s make a good product that actually helps people”, versus “let’s make money.” So I joined.
What has impressed me over the last few months is how ‘human’ Kaseware is. Not just the interaction and camaraderie amongst the team, which is great, but the way our founders are looking after their employees. I have seen them make difficult choices for the sake of their employees, choices that meant protecting us and our families as opposed to putting the company and making money first. The human aspect of Kaseware is why I work here and hope to continue working and growing for many years to come.”
Thank you Isaac and Isaac. We are so excited to have you both on our team!
Schedule a free demo today to learn more about us, our support offerings, and our incredible product features.
Korinne Condie is the Chief Customer Officer at Kaseware. She is a former government contractor with extensive experience in system engineering, operations and customer success within both government and corporate organizations.