Bjorn Hauge is a Senior Software Engineer on the Software Engineering team, and he joined EA in 2022. Bjorn is from Ripon, Wisconsin and attended Lawrence University.
How would you describe your role on your team?
Most of our software applications have three main technical elements: the cloud hosting infrastructure, the education data systems, and what we call the “app code” that users interact with most directly. The Software Engineering team owns the last technical element, and as a Senior Software Engineer, my role is to take full responsibility for that component of a project. My responsibilities range from representing that engineering perspective in high-level discussions to writing the code and/or supporting other engineers doing that.
What interested you in working at EA?
EA is a uniquely good fit for my interests. I started my career doing internal business intelligence work at a large company, where I created dashboards in Power BI, set up data pipelines between the ERP and Snowflake, and helped users debug data issues. I enjoyed it a lot and found myself going deeper into the tools and technology every time a project gave me an excuse to—which eventually led me to become more of a software engineer. EA is the perfect place for me to engage in all of those interests at once. In college, I was an economics major and spent a lot of time on research, so I was also drawn to EA due to its origins as an economic research group. EA’s beginnings in economics research are still evident today in the people and culture in a way that makes me feel very at home here.
As a non-profit organization, EA is a place where caring about the customers and stated mission doesn’t feel like swimming upstream. Engineers in general tend to care a lot about the product and not solely a lot about the quarterly profit, so I feel fortunate to be here and to work for an organization that reflects my values.
We know that every day is different, and what does a typical day at EA look like for you?
Most of my days are dedicated to solo work time. Of the three Engineering teams, Software Engineering is the team that is the least involved in the cadence and communication structures of partner work, and the most focused on product development. I collaborate with stakeholders to figure out important details about product requirements and then I work mostly by myself to figure out what the right system looks like and how to build it. Sometimes, I spend up to several weeks mostly writing code, but by and large, research and learning takes up the majority of my solo work time.
What skills do you possess that you find helpful in your role?
Creativity and flexibility are the most important skills for me. If you design the right system for the problem, the pieces come together easily. If you design it poorly, almost no amount of glue can hold them together. Design is a very creative and unstructured process.
What is your favorite project that you’ve worked on at EA?
I really like the project I’ve been focused on for more than a year now, which is EA’s new user management and login application. It was a new design from the ground up, which is always fun because having to create a lot of things from scratch is both a challenge and an opportunity.
Designing an application in this manner generates new learning in a way that following existing patterns in an existing project doesn’t, although legacy apps do offer their own unique learning opportunities. For me, learning is ultimately what makes the work enjoyable.
If you had to choose a different team to work on at EA, which team would you pick and why?
I think I’m ride-or-die for the software engineers, to be honest. I couldn’t help myself at my last job even when software engineering was not my intended role at all. So much for “flexibility,” I guess.
What changes do you anticipate in your field in the next year?
The proliferation of AI-written throwaway apps will continue, but enterprise software development will remain with only evolutionary progress.
What is something you enjoy in your free time?
Nature. I love outdoor sports, biking, camping, backpacking, foraging, and just hanging out in the woods.
Photos from Some of Bjorn’s Outdoor Adventures
When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I thought bread baking was the coolest thing in the world, but I couldn’t imagine doing anything as a job and was highly doubtful that I would ever enjoy gainful employment.
What is something that you would tell your younger self about your career?
You must find a way to enjoy it, and if you can’t, then do something else.
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