Clockwise from top-left: Bartosz, Piotr, Wieslaw, Jerzy

There are just four of us, developers. One in Seattle, WA, the others in Poland.

We telecommute. We converse almost every day using VoxPhone by VoxWare. Even though in Poland the phone lines cannot support speeds higher than 28.8 kbps, we are able to talk and exchange files in real time.

We are living in the most interesting period of human history so far. And I don't care about the old Chinese curse "May you live in the interesting times"-- I love every moment of it! I started as a physicist. I got my Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics in Wroclaw, Poland (I went back there recently to teach some advanced programming). I left Poland in search of my fortune. I worked as a post doc here and there, visited CERN, had lunch in the company of Steven Hawking, published a bunch of theoretical papers on supersymmetry, supergravity, superstrings and stuff like that. I ended up in California with a super-hangover. I didn't see much future for me in Physics.

Then I discovered computers. I taught myself programming in C and got a job at Microsoft. Eight years later I quit. My product, the Index Server (of which I was the architect and the development lead) shipped, and I decided to do something I always wanted to do. No, not start my own company-- that was just a necessary step. I wanted to prove that there is a better way to make software. So that's what I am doing now with my partner Wieslaw.

In my "free time" I also teach computer graphics for game programmers at DigiPen, talk at conferences, write magazine articles and books. I also help my son in making independent movies.

The class I taught in 1996. I have the longest hair.

Debbie Ehrlich

I was involved in software development for as long as I can remember. I got my M.S. in Computer Science in Gdansk, Poland, and I immediately started working for the Telecommunication Institute in Gdansk. I worked on a compiler for a language used in the software development of digital telex exchanges (remember telex?-- it was the predecessor of fax). In the late 80’s I left Poland and joined Microsoft where I worked on the C/C++ compiler project. Five years later I decided to return to Poland and help in setting up a Polish-American joint venture. For three years I was managing various projects involving network management software for our American partner. In spring of 1996 Bartosz visited me here in Gdansk and convinced me that, with the raise of the Internet, we had a unique opportunity to develop reliable software across the Atlantic. What was I to do? I quit my job and started telecommuting from Gdansk to Seattle.