When you love what you do, and who you are with, excellence will follow.

The #1 reason I adore coming to work every day is for the opportunity to work with an awesome team filled with smart, ambitious people who love what they do.

It’s a privilege I’ve been appreciative of every single day, week, month and year that I’ve been a partner at TWG, and today we’re celebrating a new team milestone: our first TWG’er, Dessy, is interviewing at Y-Combinator.

I know what you’re thinking, why would we be celebrating the fact that one of our developers might not be coming back from California?

But before I answer, let me muse on what makes a great developer.

In baseball, a five-tool player is someone who excels at hitting for average, hitting for power, baserunning skills & speed, throwing ability, and fielding ability.

Players considered in this elite group have included Hall of Famers Willie Mays, Andre Dawson, and Duke Snider, as well as Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodrigues (in their primes).

At TWG, a five-tool developer might look like someone who excels at:

1. Architecture & Planning;
2. Back-end coding;
3. Front-end coding;
4. Mobile development;
5. Communication – with stakeholders (someone who speaks geek & client); and

But wait.. There’s more.

There’s a bonus sixth tool.

6. Closing. I repeat… closing. Finishing. Completing. Shipping. Done for real.

When you run a company that builds Internet based software, you dream of having a five-tool dev. Frankly, if you have developers who excel in 3 of these categories, you’re doing great, and you can build a very successful team. If you have developers who excel in 4 or 5 of these categories, you hope to work with them forever – trust me. But a legendary six-tool developer, now your in “pinch-me” territory.

Back to the celebration.

One of our rising stars, Dessy Daskalov is well on her way to becoming a six-tool developer. She tech leads her own projects; builds back-ends and front-ends; develops in Rails and iOS; takes the project management burden off Dom, Chris, Jeremy and me because she’s so good with our clients; and she gets shit done!

Dessy also finds time on evenings and weekends to build side project she’s passionate about. These talents and efforts helped her get in front of Paul Graham at YC, and we’re very proud of her.

A year ago, Dom and I realized that personal and professional growth can’t be treated like a zero sum game. The goal is always for both sides to benefit and succeed, even if that means someone has to move on (one day).

We don’t know whether Paul Graham will be accepting Dessy and her team to YC, but we do know that opportunities like that don’t come around for everyone, and we’re extremely proud of her, and supportive of her efforts.

Go Go Dessislava!

After 9 years of building great web applications, web sites, and system integrations for clients of every stripe, The Working Group (TWG) is expanding our service offering to include mobile application development.

Why are we getting into mobile?

Well, the truth is we’ve been doing it for a while. We launched our first mobile app about two years ago and have been developing them for select clients ever since. And for us, formalizing this into a full service offering just seemed like a logical progression given what we do: help organizations build and grow their business online.

Because right now it isn’t about web vs. mobile, it’s about combining the strengths of web and mobile together to help our clients get to where they want to be.  So we’ve decided to make it official and really put our backs into mobile application development.

Some New Faces at TWG:

We’ve brought on some great people to make sure our mobile application development is as strong as the web side of our shop. Chris Eben joined us in September as a managing partner and will be leading the business side of our mobile division.  We’re also privileged to have Jeremy Bower, formerly of Viigo and Polar Mobile, as our director of mobile development. Jeremy brings a wealth of dev chops to TWG, and will be tasked with building a world class team covering the major platforms, including iOS, Android, Blackberry and mobile web. Look for more information on Chris and Jeremy on this blog in the coming weeks.

Let’s Talk Mobile:

If you are thinking about developing a mobile app for your business, or if you just want to know more about our offering, please contact us at: 416.850.2500 /  info@twg.ca or checkout our mobile portfolio.