Up at 5AM: The 5AM Solutions Blog

5AMers think about software. A lot.

The clock shows a minute past noon. The stragglers of a steady stream of 5AMers finish sneaking in the conference room door and quickly take their seats. Someone dims the lights while another finishes pulling the shades. A hush comes over the room. “Everybody ready?” Nods answer. A mouse cursor clicks the play button. The frozen bespectacled figure on the projector screen comes to life. In a stern voice, he declares, “Integrated tests are a scam – a self-replicating virus that invades your projects! It threatens to destroy your codebase, to destroy your sanity, to destroy your life.” Another 5AM Tech Talk begins…

A few weeks ago my colleague Chris Lasher gave a biologist's perspective of working for 5AM. I came to 5AM with no background in biology but I'm choosing to stay with a company that has figured out how to recruit great engineers, and knows how to get the absolute best work from them. These excellent results keep 5AM's clients extremely satisfied, and getting this output has nothing to do specifically with biology.

Solid code. A core pursuit of 5AM, software engineers the world over and the multitude of stakeholders from end users to investors. The value of solid code is intrinsic to us, and a constant mantra with the understanding that software is more than code. We have shared often how we get our customers there in our postings and our methodology - glassbox. The value isn’t always apparent upfront and there are always trade-offs that change per situation, customer and even within project cycles. A customer related to us that “when your hair's on fire, call 5AM”. We appreciate the trust! We work to put the fire out and avoid future fires (that we can predict!). The 5AM environment helps. Here are 6 quick elements that help us help our customers get the fire out, the features done and the solution available … earlier.

At 5AM Solutions, we make positive impacts in our clients’ software, and our clients’ software makes positive impacts on the world. As a 5AMer, I have developed software helping to power massively parallel targeted sequencing, variant analysis for research and clinical diagnostics, and bleeding edge assays for biotech startups. We tangibly move the state-of-the-art in the life sciences industry forward.

I consider myself somewhat unique at 5AM in that I work remotely and I'm quality assurance focused. Being involved in this domain I enjoy knowing that I'm making a difference in lives through something I love doing. I also enjoy working at 5AM because we have a culture of quality. Our process and the people that make the process work are focused on improvement. 

Work is a vital and vibrant part of my life. 5AM's success is my two word job description. It has been for over 10 years no matter my role. At the core of 5AM are the people who did chose, do choose, and will choose to work here.

I always say that there are two things that I love about 5AM: what I do and the people I get to do it with.  Nowhere else have I found a place where I can work on things that help to make a real difference in people’s lives with a group of such smart and dedicated people all focused on that common goal.  

I started at 5AM Solutions as a summer intern while studying at the University of Maryland. I was looking for a full-time internship that fit my interests and accommodated my summer class schedule, but at the time I was unaware of how exceptional my experience at 5AM would be. Aside from superb mentoring and interesting projects, I got my first introduction into 5AM’s award-winning flexibility; I could set my own schedule and work from home when I wanted.