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Rebellion Defense info
https://medium.com/rebellion-defense/designing-with-bill-tinney-f625fd6a8627
Bill is an engineer and designer at Rebellion where he focuses on user experience.
Tell me about your career journey thus far; how did you end up at Rebellion?
“For two decades I’ve advocated for users — helping them find their next favorite album, give more to charity, interact with various CRMs through voice interfaces, quantify and continuously improve their health, and now protect civilians and help our service members come home more whole. Half of my career has been in startups, where I thrive pushing pixels, writing front-end code, as well as growing teams to create products that enhance users’ lives and solve their pain points.
I worked with Chris Lynch (Rebellion’s CEO) years ago at a startup we created called North By Nine. After years of working separately on other visions, our paths aligned and I have the honor of joining him in creating a suite of amazing products for Rebellion … this time with a host of other incredible talent for a great cause.”
How do you settle into a day of developing code at Rebellion?
“Four things help me drop into the zone daily: great music in my QC15 headphones, an adjustable height desk (with a FluidStance board), a massive 5k monitor, and a to-do list to check off. Context switching can be brutal for productivity, so ensuring I’ve mapped out my day well is critical. From there, I can prioritize quick wins or dive deep into Sketch, React, or Photoshop to check off those boxes.
No two days are the same, but there’s always a guarantee that we’ll have a win to celebrate and something to debate … and maybe, just maybe, someone will do something crazy on a OneWheel.”
How do your personal values drive your work at Rebellion?
“In the past few years, I’ve grown more and more frustrated with the downward spiral of accountability in our news headlines and amongst other things, a looming consensus from my peers that AI was going to eventually be used for evil … especially when it comes to wartime.
As an optimist, pacifist, and technologist from Seattle, I realized I couldn’t optimistically await someone else to solve the big tech problems looming over our military today. No one is coming to save us, it’s up to us to do the right thing and make change.
Our troops go to the front lines on our elected officials’ whims. Their safety, and the safety of the civilians in the areas they are sent, are only as good as the tools and data they possess. Just like every other product I’d made to date, their success also hinges upon being able to make informed decisions as quickly as possible — only theirs have tremendous life-altering implications.
I choose to help them sleep well at night knowing they’ve made the best decision they could in a heightened moment. Through Rebellion, I’ve found that technologists have a place in this fight to protect our nation’s ideals and freedoms. Securing this bedrock is more important now than ever before. There will be opportunities to create shiny magical trinkets in the future, and maybe I’ll go back to that comfy place, but for now, I’m honoring my duty as a designer and engineer where I can make a truly meaningful impact — The Rebellion.”
How does your work at Rebellion bridge the cultural divide between Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C.?
“While the work in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. may be well-intentioned, oftentimes critical decisions made on both coasts come at the expense of people’s privacy, health, finances, and more. D.C. can move at a snail’s pace, and the Valley is boom and bust. My aspiration with Rebellion is that together we do good in the world while also doing well for it, to move swiftly but not irrationally, and ultimately to focus on our user base and not just give them lip service. With expertise on both sides of the aisle, we may just inspire others to create similar rebellions on behalf of the environment, civil rights, and other corners of the society that need increased advocacy.”