Augustin Roux is a Software Engineer at Double, based in the Brooklyn HQ office, but frequently traveling to France and beyond. He was drawn to the purpose-driven work at Double and designing a product that helps people focus on what they love. When he’s not dreaming up the next product feature, he gets creative with music and finds joy riding his bike. Get to know Augustin and why he joined Double.
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What attracted you to work at Double?
When I joined, we were an early, early, early stage startup! I quickly discovered what that meant—building lots of features, conducting lots of user research. It’s now a typical part of my day, but at the time it was like wow. We’re so meticulous in terms of defining a feature. Why are we creating this feature? How are we going to do it? What are the use cases? It impressed me. We get to build the feature way quicker than I used to do in previous companies. All of that was aligned with the type of company I wanted to work at, my dream company.
When I met Alice, the CEO of Double, she explained that Double is remote friendly. As long as you’re doing your work, you can do it wherever you want. This was important to me, since I have a girlfriend and family in France. She also told me about an employee at Double who has to spend 4 months of the year in Portugal and the 8 other months in America and that was totally acceptable and workable. When she told me that, I instantly thought that this was a great perspective and way of approaching work.
What was your journey to becoming a software engineer?
My first job was with a big television channel in France called Canal+. I had worked with them for 6 months as an intern and afterward, moved to Paris and joined them full time. A colleague of mine from Canal+ was actually hiring the first tech team for Dior. He wanted to create a tech team inside Dior that would take care of their website. They had been working with an outside contractor, but they had no idea what work was being done and the website was really bad. They needed a more sophisticated approach to technology as they wanted to enter the magical world of ecommerce.
We were a very small team at the beginning—maybe 3 people.I was the tech lead and I got to choose all of the technologies I wanted to use for the project. We were able to work with amazing contractors as well.
Then, another colleague of mine from Canal+ asked if I would like to work in the US. He asked, “Out of 10, how much would you like to work in the US?” And I said “15!” My friend told me that he knew of a guy named Christophe (Double’s Co-Founder) who was starting a company in New York—Double. We had a meeting in person and I had a great feeling. He told me everything about Double and I knew I wanted to join.
How do you see Double’s values at practice in your work?
All of the work we’re doing in engineering embraces the idea of focusing on what matters. The value, ‘Humans First’ is lived out at Double because we’re a company that’s not only about tech, it’s also about people. There are actual executive assistants behind our product. It’s tech and human. That’s something that you’re not really used to at tech-forward companies. It’s challenging and it’s inspiring.
What’s a typical day look like for you at Double?
There’s no typical day! We’re often building and implementing features. Some days we brainstorm on features and help design the entire user journey. We put the features live, track all of the metrics, and try to see how it’s used and if we can improve. Or, if we need to drop the feature. That happens! But it’s not time wasted. We’re learning why a particular feature didn’t work, so we can build better technology.
What makes you excited about the future of Double?
There is a long-term, optimistic vision that we’re going to help people get back to doing the work they’re best at. It’s a big, humanity-driven dream—to do and focus on what you love. Working toward that goal is inspiring to me. On a day-to-day basis and in the short-term, it’s the challenge of knowing you’re building something that doesn’t exist and seeking this grail is inspiring.
What brings you joy (outside of work)?
I am really into music and I try to take time every day to practice. In the perfect world I would be a musician, but it’s very tough. I’m also very into cycling and have been into it even more during quarantine. I also love sailing and the sea in general. My dream life would be living in Los Angeles next to the beach, seeing the ocean everyday.