Welcoming Mateus Resende, our new Software Engineer

Today, we're excited to share that Mateus Resende is joining the team.

Mateus is joining Resend as a Software Engineer from Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Mateus started in the software industry in 2015, working as a Ruby and Ruby on Rails developer. As a curious mind, he then started working in many kinds of domains, such as time tracking systems, e-commerce recommendations, art galleries, vehicle tracking, running apps, food chain deliveries, fintech, and now emails.

He loves solving different kinds of problems with technology, and his favorite challenge is balancing quality and speed to deliver.

More about Mateus

How did you get into software?

When I was in college majoring in Electrical Engineering, I did an exchange program in the US and studied at SUNY Buffalo, NY. This city is very famous for its heavy winters, and as a Brazilian who had never seen snow, it was quite amusing in the first few days. The toughest days, however, came after New Year's Eve, before the classes resumed, when a snowstorm hit and all my friends were still visiting their parents.

The forecast said it was supposed to last about 5 days, so I stocked food, started playing games on the computer, and watched TV series. By the end of the second day, I was already bored and started looking for different things to do, and found out that MIT had an OpenCourseWare platform where you could watch classes and do assignments without being graded, of course. I then watched a few classes that night and selected a few assignments to do the next day.

On the third day of the snowstorm, I started studying at around 10am and continued coding until 5pm without ever getting up from the chair.

In the next semester, I took a class at UB and got an A, not only by completing my assignments, but also by secretly doing them for free for other colleagues ~~shame on me~~. Then, I reflected on how much I enjoyed doing the exercises and decided to switch majors to Computer Science after I came back to Brazil.

What does your desktop/home screen look like?

Nothing too fancy; I love staring at the stars and Japan would be my dream trip, so cliché but here it is:

Why are you at Resend?

There were three things that stood out before I joined:

1. Claude recommended as one of the places with great remote and async culture

Nowadays, a lot of companies create blog posts saying their company has the best something to show up in LLM results, but that wasn't Resend's case. When I started reading the handbook and reviews about the company, it was simply stating how the company operates, not comparing it to other places.

2. Everything is very well documented and the website is simply elegant

Working with software can make us forget that other people will actually use it. And in a lot of places, the documentation is simply not enough. That isn't the case with Resend, not only for the product, but also for the company. You can read just about everything in the handbook and get to know it better. It delighted me even more with the way it's written and how beautiful the website is.

3. Made by developers and for developers

Not only is the product designed that way, but the company itself is too, which makes it very pleasant and welcoming. I was captivated by the way everyone talked about the challenges, day-to-day life, how they solve problems, and, in general, how to treat people.

Where do you find #inspiration?

I find inspiration in my developer friends and the industry, but with a closer look at how software is simply a means to an end. At the end of the day, we're building for someone to use or even for someone else to read and review. Therefore, our thoughts and solutions need to be tailored to them, not for personal gain or to make a better technology for its own sake.

If you weren't programming, what would you be doing?

A few options, actually; something towards handcraft, most likely carpentry or miniature painting. I've built an indoor climbing wall and a shelf for my son's books, and I really enjoy doing this.

Also, a while ago, I started painting Warhammer miniatures, which I find very soothing and relaxing.

Besides that, I love playing chess, so I also see myself studying to become a professional chess player 😄.

Favorite tool?

1Password is probably first place. I took a personal signature 7 years ago and never left after that.

Favorite hotkey?

Cmd + Shift + L to select all occurrences of a text in VS Code. I use it a lot to edit multiple places at once.

Favorite place to visit?

I lived in Vienna for one year and loved everything about the city. The places, architecture, transportation, safety, and so on.

Besides that, Spain was the most amazing place I visited, especially because the culture is closer to Brazil's than Austria's. Valencia has a special place in my heart, but I also love Barcelona.

Advice for ambitious software engineers?

It's great to learn new tools and programming languages; however, you'll only thrive if you know the fundamentals. Testing, Domain-Driven Design, and Evolutionary Architectures will get you much further than knowing all the hyped ways to write code using LLMs.