Question 1

How long does it take to join a project that is already under way?

Accepted Answer

At Quinck we join a project under way by reading the code and the pipelines before writing a line. In the first week we get builds, tests and environments running locally, then we take on one whole module, so the new code goes through the same pipeline as yours. Releasing stays in your team's hands.

Question 2

Who actually writes the code on the project?

Accepted Answer

With us the code is written by the same person you talk to in the meeting. There are 19 of us in Imola between engineers and designers, and we do not pass the work down chains of subcontractors. A project normally has two to four people, with one fixed technical lead for its whole duration.

Question 3

How do you choose between PostgreSQL and MongoDB, or between a monolith and microservices?

Accepted Answer

We choose the database and the shape of the architecture on the project's numbers: data volume, shape of the queries, expected load. On one project we weighed PostgreSQL and MongoDB for three days before deciding. We introduce microservices where the boundary between domains is clear, because a wrong boundary is paid for over years.

Question 4

How do you read data from industrial machines?

Accepted Answer

We read from machines with Modbus and OPC UA, and we use Go on the machine when the frequency approaches 10,000 samples per second. The data goes up to the cloud on AWS through a pipeline that survives line interruptions and re-queues whatever did not get through. One example is the laser system built for IMA.

Question 5

What happens when something breaks in production?

Accepted Answer

We install observability from day one, so we start from logs and metrics instead of guesses. Unit and end-to-end tests cover regressions, and the pipeline blocks the release before it reaches users. When the error is ours we say so, with a reconstruction of what happened and of what we are changing.

Question 6

What can I read of your code before signing?

Accepted Answer

We publish Multijet on GitHub, the framework for microservice monorepos in TypeScript that generates types, handlers and clients from the OpenAPI contract. On the technical portfolio there are the projects and the research and development work, with architecture and choices, and on the blog we write about problems we really ran into.

Software architectures chosen on the project's numbers.

The stack is chosen every time, on the project's numbers

Four things you find working with Quinck

The stack is chosen on the numbers

Code you can read in two years

We work alongside teams that already exist

Choices are discussed

The work, instead of the promise

More technical reading

The questions engineers ask us