"If Google Lets me Down, I Write About It," Ben Church — Google Writer of the Year Nom

Ben Church is an engineer from Canada has been nominated as Hacker Noon's Contributor of the Year in our Google story category. The Noonies are Hacker Noon’s way of getting to know — from a community perspective —  what matters in tech today. So, we asked our Noonie Nominees to tell us. Here’s what Ben had to share.

1. Which 2020 Noonie/s have you been nominated for?

1. Hacker Noon Contributor of the Year - Google

2. Tell us a bit about yourself.

I'm an engineer out of Canada who just loves to break down the barriers to building great products. To that effect I've been doing my best to write tutorials that help people build robust systems easily and championing remote work everywhere I go.

3. Tell us about the things you make / write / manage / build.

Day to day I run a small specialized consultancy that has been building product for brands like Uber, Facebook and Lonely Planet.

I also run a small SaaS product called MagicNumber which records and transcribes phone calls easily.

Finally, in my spare time I write a lot on Remote work, distributed systems, and Elixir.

Basically whenever I feel like google has let me down, and the final answer was simple but just not widely available I'll write a walk through on the topic so no one else has to go through the same pain I just did.

4. What are you most excited about right now?

Honestly I've been in love with GraphQL, Hasura and the 3 Factor App. SO much potential there.

5. What are you worried about right now?

I've got a wedding coming up next week, so basically everything.

6. What's the most useful advice you've ever given somebody?

Advice I've given? Oh I'm not sure what ended up being the most helpful but I do like to tell people:

"know the difference between needing permission and wanting permission, ignore the latter."

7. How has the pandemic changed your life and/or career?

We all missed out on one amazing ski season. Instead of riding through powder I just ended up shoveling it.

8. If we gave you $10 million to invest in one thing right now, where would you put it?

A lot of small profitable SaaS companies with Expansion based revenue and Net Negative Churn.

9. What's an opinion you have that most people don't agree with?

I'm fairly agreeable. I'm a bit suspect on buying homes for primary residences. I think you should always rent happiness and buy cashflow.

10. Which apps can't you live without?

Notion, Calm, Wave Accounting.

11. What are you currently learning?

Hasura and a bunch of low-code tools.

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