Bob Glickstein
Staff-level software engineer / Tech lead / Manager
with bonus writing skills
Marin County, CA
Marin County, CA
Established software engineering expert and author. Co-founder of top website. Cool under pressure. Seeking to collaborate with, mentor, and lead smart people on interesting problems where robust software engineering can do the world some good.
Get it done. Get it right. Accept the blame if you expect the glory. No ego in code. Defend your beliefs with reasoned arguments and drop the ones you can't defend. Have fun. Learn something. Teach something. Be a mensch.
Five for six. Joined startup Z-Code Software, later acquired by NCD. Co-founded The Internet Movie Database, later acquired by Amazon.com. Co-founded Zanshin (a.k.a. iPost), later acquired by Clickmail. Joined startup Danger, later acquired by Microsoft. Joined startup Chain, later acquired by Lightyear. Joined startup Coinbase, later a top public fintech company.
Passionate about code modularity, readability, and reusability. Believer in open standards. Gifted explainer of complex ideas in simple terms. Talented at encapsulating tricky systems code behind beautifully designed APIs. In-the-trenches experience with scalable, high-availability custom data services. Tenacious resolver of gnarly debugging mysteries. Eager mentor to junior engineers.
Expert in the design, implementation, monitoring, and maintenance of distributed, high-throughput, fault-tolerant Internet services.
Passionate about code quality and documenting, developing, embodying, and encouraging best practices.
Current strongest programming language is Go. Previous strongest languages have been Python, C++, C, and Perl. Considerable expertise in Javascript (including Typescript, React, and React Native flavors). Intermediate expertise in Java, Rust, and Lisp.
Expert in blockchain protocols and techniques.
Wizard-level understanding of Unix/Linux and related systems. Expert in SQL programming and schema design.
Experienced with Google App Engine and other Google Cloud Services. Limited experience with Android and iOS programming, OpenGL, Amazon Web Services, and GraphQL.
Coinbase. The most trusted brand in cryptocurrency. I was a staff engineer working on developer infrastructure. For a while I was also an engineering manager leading multiple teams.
Pogo. Consumer app and service simplifying making payments while traveling abroad.
Chain / Interstellar. Chain was a leading blockchain-technology company. Later it was acquired by Lightyear, the commercial counterpart to the Stellar Development Foundation; the combined entity is called Interstellar.
Google / YouTube. I worked principally on the YouTube Rights Management team, dealing with copyright and revenue issues; and on the YouTube Video Editor team, building "iMovie in the cloud."
Danger. The company that produced the Hiptop, a.k.a. the T-Mobile Sidekick, the first consumer smartphone.
Internet Movie Database / Amazon. Cofounded the IMDb, helping to take it from the hobby of a group of cinephiles to a commercial business. Later acquired by Amazon.
Zanshin / iPost. Cofounded this e-mail technology startup that pivoted to (ethical) e-mail marketing, renaming itself iPost. Later acquired by Clickmail.
Z-Code. A leading provider of cross-platform e-mail software in the pre-webmail days.
Carnegie Mellon Information Technology Center. While still an undergrad I joined the effort to build Andrew, the campus computing environment, still in use today.
Outlived. This website will show you the famous people who died on this date in history and, if you give it your birthdate, will also show what famous people you've recently outlived. Written in Go for Google App Engine.
Kill Ralphie! This website revives a storytelling game that used to exist on the message boards at Carnegie Mellon. In one chapter, a storyteller places the hero, Ralphie, in mortal peril, as amusingly as possible. In the next chapter, a storyteller saves him. And so on, forever. This version of Kill Ralphie! lets the story branch, so every "kill" or "save" chapter can have multiple followups. Written in Python for Google App Engine.
Counting the bits at YouTube. A presentation to fifth graders about some of the math and technology behind YouTube videos.
When you click a YouTube link. Another presentation about YouTube, this one for seventh graders, about the steps involved in playing a video in your web browser.
Carnegie Mellon University. B.Sc. Applied math / computer science.