Roughly speaking, with Zen (and now again with our new startup TaskTorch), I was in charge of the technical side of the business, and she was in charge of anything non-technical (finance, marketing, support, etc.)
Niki is an industrial-organizational psychologist, so her viewpoint is completely different from mine as a software engineer. As a developer it can be hard for me to see past the software sometimes, and Niki's perspective helps quite a bit.
Very cool! I can totally see where you are coming from. I also tend to get stuck in the minutiae of software sometimes, and it may be empirical data at best, but I feel that women are sometimes so much better at seeing things from the user's point of view, and have a better sense of empathy for the user.
I'm glad to see that you managed to have such a close and complimentary working relationship with ur SO. All the best for your new startup, and am looking forward to Chapter 2 of your blog post!
The new platform is light years ahead of the old one. Part of that is six years difference in technology, part of it is that I have another six years of experience, but mostly it's a difference in mindset. RethinkDB and React in particular are fantastic.
Niki is an industrial-organizational psychologist, so her viewpoint is completely different from mine as a software engineer. As a developer it can be hard for me to see past the software sometimes, and Niki's perspective helps quite a bit.