IT Department

From Matter-Antimatter, Warp Cores and Photon Torpedoes

The IT Department is something like the engine room of the USS Spreadshirt. Even as the customers are zipping through the Christmas shopping season with us at Warp 9.9, we remain calm and try to hit 9.91. We are also responsible for the continuous add-ons, upgrades and revisions to the site.

This also shows the expansive structure of our department: the admins are there to keep the warp core stable and to make sure that we have enough Photon Torpedoes aboard. The developers, on the other hand, build the Scanners, Deflectors, Infinite Improbability Drives or whatever else our Product Managers can muster up.

Ok, enough Star Trek analogies:

The Admins

The admins are in essence those responsible for keeping the entire office technology running (a.k.a. Internal Services). This means new computers for new employees, server support, internet connection, the entire wiring, the telephone system, the account, file and mail server management, third-party software and so on.

The other group of admins deal with the operation, maintenance and expansion of our web platform. This means that our small server farm must be kept up to date, backups made, the performance optimised and new servers installed.

Certainly everyone has heard the usual clichés about system admins (nerdy t-shirts with sayings like "got root?", cryptic speech peppered with technical terms, inhuman consumption of coffee etc.).

Just to reassure you - they are all true.

The Developers

The second part of the IT Department is made of the software developers, whose territory is divided between Leipzig and Berlin. As the name already suggests, the main role of these charming life forms is the new development and enhancement of our platform. In an ideal world, a developer is fed bit by bit with so-called "tickets" by his product manager and converts them into scheduled tasks.

In reality, the developer can be found in a dangerous habitat, as everyone wants everything and best done yesterday. Additionally the developers are constantly disturbed by the commonly-named "Software Bugs". Nevertheless, the developer finds himself in a biosphere at Spreadshirt which optimally fits his needs.

Unfortunately, a developer's job is not quite so passively comfortable, as he is naturally incorporated into the product planning from the beginning. Project management is also quite often part of his job. From design to implementation to the testing of the whole software, the developer is present for the entire cycle.

Of course, the motto "always forward" applies for everyone in the IT Department: we work here with "bleeding edge" technologies and every employee has an expert topic with which he is constantly expanding his knowledge.