Arya is an Infrastructure Software Engineer at Houzz whose responsibilities include automation, monitoring, availability, scaling, and security of the Houzz infrastructure. When he’s not at work, you can find him doing yoga, reading, improvising, exploring nature and cooking.
How did you get into computer science?
My love and curiosity for computers started when I was 11 years old and my dad bought a PC for my brother’s college coursework. At that time in Iran, where I grew up, it was very rare to have a computer. In many ways it was like a magical box that people were afraid to touch since no one knew how to fix it.
When I was home alone, I would play games on the computer. Soon after I started secretly disassembling and reassembling parts of it. Then, in middle school, someone donated 20 computers to our school and since our principal knew I had a computer at home, I was asked to help set up a computer lab and put it into good use.
My interest in computers continued to grow and I learned coding with QBasic and Pascal, and taught it to my classmates in 8th grade. We made a few games for fun and an accounting tool for the school. A few years later, when the Bulletin Board System (BBS) networks became really popular, I used the phone line from our upstairs unit to start a small network until our phone bill became unaffordable. The Internet made it to Iran, and I built my first website when I was 16 and ran a side business assembling and selling desktop computers.
During college in the U.S., I managed IT for a department in school with four computer labs while studying computer science and engineering. My boss at the time introduced me to administrating the servers on campus and learning Linux and modern programming languages. I used to dream of dealing with racks of servers and never imagined that would come true. I never had to think “what am I going to do.” I knew from the time I was 11.
What’s your favorite part of working at Houzz?
My favorite part is that it doesn’t feel like work! For me, Houzz feels like a second home because I really love the people I work with; we work and play together. We typically don’t do things conventionally, and encourage each other to apply our own creativity to solve problems in any aspect of our business. These are some of the qualities that are unique to Houzz based on my experience.
How would you describe the engineering culture at Houzz?
Oh! I wrote a blog post about that. Read more about it here.
What do you like about your role at Houzz?
I really enjoy my role because it combines three things I love: helping people, solving challenging problems and taking care of business like working with vendors and decision makers. This is the first role in my career that has given me the opportunity to do all these at the same time.
What do you do when you’re not working?
The list is long, but I like to emphasize on activities that help me grow personally and professionally. At least once a week I engage in some relaxing activity, I either do yoga to align my mind and body, or cook something. On weekends, I like to grab a book and go on a hike or to the beach, find a secluded spot and read. I mostly read nonfiction books on topics ranging from psychology and spirituality to team building and science. Some of my favorite authors are Stephen Hawking, Malcolm Gladwell, Thomas Friedman and Richard Dawkins.
How have you used Houzz at home?
I use Houzz for my apartment. I’ve already decorated my bathroom and need to work on my living room. I have lots of ideabooks for my “someday” house.
What should an engineering candidate know about working at Houzz?
I would call it the two B’s – be bold and brave. Bold in terms of creativity. Lots of problems we face are new to us and it’s important to have a creative approach to solve new problems. Brave meaning having the guts to accept the challenge and take the risk of utilizing your creativity. These two qualities are important in being really successful at Houzz.
