in Engineering

in Design

Grockit is about questioning together. To this end, we are developing an online learning game where people can teach each other.

Our organization is about the space where learning and technology meet. By combining our years of experience as teachers and developers, we are creating a place where learners can meet other learners. You can read more about our thoughts on learning and technology in our blog. You can also learn more about how we live and work at Grockit.

Grockit is building sophisticated tools that encourage good learning through good teaching. As programmers, we take full advantage of this approach.

Paired Programming: Pairing allows us to spread expertise while also writing elegant code. It also helps us to be super agile. By trading pairs often, everyone has an opportunity to have a comprehensive understanding of the entire code base, and we all collectively own the code (and the rare bug).

Test Driven: Code at Grockit starts by writing a test that asserts what we expect our code to do. We then make the test pass by writing the simplest amount of code possible required to satisfy the test.

Integration: And, we don't settle on simple tests - on every commit to our code base we automatically run the entire test suite. If we're going to fail, we want as many chances to know about it as quickly as possible.

We couldn't have developed this approach without Pivotal Labs, our agility mentors.

Comfortable: We start with "cheap desks, expensive chairs1" and wrap it all in a space with plants, couches, a kitchen filled with snacks and drinks, breakfast, lunch, and even a loft if you need to crash.

Fun: Lunch time Wii challenges in Mario Kart, the occasional evening Werewolf session and spontaneous weekend parties are pretty standard fare in our San Francisco Office.

Healthy: Sure our daily breakfasts and lunches are tasty, but they are also nutrient dense and all most entirely Organic. Our water is filtered through a 10-stage filter, and we even offer cold pressed coffee. For cleaning, we only use non-toxic supplies.

Green: In addition to being non-toxic, we strive to use only environmentally friendly cleaning supplies. We are also proud of the fact that we recycle and compost far more than we trash, use high efficiency lighting, and purchase our food from local businesses and farms.