Erza Mehmeti: How long have you been with KYBURZ?

Thorsten Riess: For a little more than 5 years.

Erza: How did you hear about us?

Thorsten: A headhunter asked me if I would be interested in working for an electric vehicle manufacturer. I naturally said "yes" - expecting it to be about cars... As it turned out, my expectation was not quite right in that respect.

Erza: What did you do before KYBURZ?

Thorsten: After my studies, I was a research assistant at various universities in England, the USA and most recently in Konstanz. After that I took the plunge into business and worked for a small company that processes weather data for a large German weather portal. This gave me the freedom to develop my skills in software development and I was also able to put my mathematical training to good use. Looking back, I not only enjoyed it, but it also helped me enormously in my personal development. Nevertheless, one day it was time for something new.

Erza: What are your activities?

Thorsten: I take care of the backend of our fleet management system. This is the backbone, so to speak, which is not directly visible to the users, but without which nothing would work. For example, the database where all the data ends up and the software that processes and edits the telemetry data of the vehicles.

Erza: What are your strengths?

Thorsten: Probably that I have kept my curiosity, especially about new technologies, and that thanks to my mathematics studies I am relatively good at understanding complex relationships and reducing things to the essentials.

Erza: What motivates you?

Thorsten: To always make our product a little bit better, and to be able to try out interesting new technologies at the same time.

Erza: What is your typical daily routine?

Thorsten: I usually get up very early - this habit dates back to the time when the children were younger and had to be picked up early from school/kindergarten. But this still has a decisive advantage today: I can work undisturbed for a few hours in the morning. Most of the time, this means programming the fleet management system on the one hand and taking care of the infrastructure of the system on the other. In other words, making sure that the servers and the database work well. Often there is a special request from our support team, either because something is not working properly or because a special data analysis has been requested. Once that's done, I continue to work on my tickets - we usually work according to the Scrum principle in 2-week sprints. I also organise a small internal event at irregular intervals where we show or teach each other something - usually a useful software tool or one of our hobbies.

Erza: What do you like? What do you like less?

Thorsten: I like working with motivated, interesting and interested people, trying out new things and learning. I don't like it so much when I'm suddenly jolted out of my concentration. Then I occasionally become a "grumpy old man".

Erza: What do you like to do in your free time?

Thorsten: I collect and restore old home computers from my youth, especially Atari devices. Unfortunately, besides my family and other hobbies, I don't have enough time to really take care of their restoration, so that's something I'm saving for retirement. I also play ice hockey for the Eis-Füchsen Kreuzlingen - a mixed hobby team. I also spend a lot of time at the Konstanz hackerspace hacKNology. There I also tinker with our projects with my friends, for example, for the CE Challenge. Our last project was a hydroponic system on a PAH trailer. Before that, we had converted a DXP into a moving boat. In December, we are organising a hackathon on the topic of "Open Data" together with the city of Konstanz. On the side, I'm helping a friend with his start-up project, which involves the evaluation of geodata for noise analysis.

Erza: What are your plans for the future?

Thorsten: In the coming summer semester, I will be teaching a database lecture at the University of Applied Sciences in Konstanz on a temporary basis. I'm really looking forward to that. In the longer term, I don't really make any firm plans, but let everything come to me.