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Testimonials

• Ben has been a pleasure to work with since his joining Slingshot. Ben is a talented engineer who is confident in his technical abilities and gets buy in from other engineers by demonstrating why he is confident. He has knowledge across a wide array of different areas and strives to understand the minor details as well to have a fully informed understanding. Ben is also not afraid to say when he does not know something and effectively uses others around him by driving the conversations when this happens.

  I have primarily worked with Ben in relation to open incidents as well as blockers in our release management flow. In both of these areas Ben has demonstrated his strong judgment skills in understanding the customer impact and what tasks should take priority to mitigate customer impact and overall improve customer relations in light of a bad situation. Additionally, Ben also has strong troubleshooting skills and understands when to reach out for help if he hits a roadblock or simply requires more support to meet a timeline. Overall Ben’s ability to communicate appropriately and effectively have allowed for many issues to be resolve in much more timely manners.

  Outside of the above topics though, I’d like to highlight Ben’s contributions to the developer experience at slingshot in two areas:

  1. Mental Well Being -> Ben has set up routine meetings where he pulls in other developers to discuss what we are doing right and wrong in Slingshot in relation to our engineer’s mental health. While these conversations are not always easy, the intent is close to home with Capital One’s core values and also important to the longevity of the application.
  2. Well Managed -> Ben has pushed through multiple different initiatives focused on communicating and potentially resolving core issues that were causing (1) reduced developer efficiency and (2) increased incident potential. These types of changes often go under the radar in relation to customer impact but it is very important to understand that reducing the friction that developers experience in turn allows them to provide a better experience for our customers.

  Overall I have very much enjoyed working with Ben and look forward to working with him more in the future.

• Ben has very strong communication within our team and with other teams. He is able to effective communicate to stakeholders about projects, setting expectations and encouraging meaningful discussions. He often lead small team meetings, allowing for productive and structured meetings. He also has very well-written documentations and peer reviews that provide clear information transfer to other devs.

  Ben also has exceptional judgement. When the team is swamped with my high priority tasks, he is able to distribute work effective and keep our eyes on the most important tasks. He is also able to challenge ownership and pull in domain owners when appropriate. He is always challenging ideas whether it is processes or code in peer reviews. This allows for the team to stay efficient and ensure high standard for code quality across the team.

• Ben was a great partner to work with during the [self-service SSO] experience, especially in the early phases before the project transitioned fully to tech implementation. He has a strong ability to explain complex technical details in a way that’s accessible to non-technical partners, which made collaboration smooth and productive. Ben consistently showed a clear understanding of the importance of maintaining a consistent, well-communicated user experience—even when timelines were tight and priorities shifted quickly.

  His openness and proactive communication stood out, particularly when usability concerns surfaced. By increasing the frequency of cross-functional updates, Ben helped keep both tech and design aligned, allowing the team to move quickly on critical adjustments during tech discovery. His teamwork, adaptability, and clarity of communication make him a reliable and collaborative partner, and I look forward to future opportunities to work together.

• “I’ve worked with Ben in a somewhat limited capacity so far, but I’ve been impressed with his advocacy for engineering excellence and the well-being of engineers in our organization.

  “From what I have seen, Ben has made several improvements across these areas, including:

  • “Engineering Excellence:

    • “Wholesome documentation improvements: Commonly finding gaps in our documentation, and taking the initiative to improve these gaps.

    • “Monorepo Logging improvements: Finding gaps and inconsistencies in logs across various domains in the monorepo, and taking the initiative to normalize these logs in pursuit of easing our ability to monitor Slingshot as a whole.

  • “Well-being of Engineers:

    • “Ben cares a great deal about the well-being of our engineers, and I have seen him advocate for us all in every occasion that comes to memory. He has bridged candid feedback across various levels in our engineering organization, and has been a driving force for voicing this collective feedback to our leadership.

  “I’d love to see Ben continue to lean in and drive impact in these areas. There is so much potential for positive change in our organization, and I believe you can be a key player in tangibly making that a reality.”

• “Ben does an excellent job expressing himself.”
• “Ben has been proactive in helping to improve the overall release process and coordinating with me and other team leads to ensure that we continue to improve the tooling and infrastructure around the release. Specifically, Ben has been a strong advocate for improving the visibility of the E2E test failures and ensuing that the teams that own those tests are aware of the failed tests and are prioritizing fixing them. In addition, Ben has helped identify multiple opportunities for improving the overall operational efficiency, and health of slingshot by leading discussions with the wider team.”
• “I really appreciate your ability to encourage active discourse during meetings especially during workshop retrospectives. During the last workshop retrospective you were able to mantle different personas based on what the context called for. At times you worked as a facilitator encouraging conversation and making sure we stayed on track. Other times, you engaged more directly as a peer in conversation. The seamless transition is notable only because of your effectiveness in pulling it off bringing all the benefits of each persona together. It keeps engagement high, don’t stop!”
• “Helped me expand my reach, provided impact for me and the team, and made me feel welcomed by talking through tasks, careers, and life.”

• “Ben is an extremely talented developer whose passion for Git and the Git Office Hours is very evident. He is very proactive in creating meeting plans and notes, and is very professional in guiding the direction of the meetings we held. Furthermore, Ben is very active in assisting the Git Stewards with their Workshops. Specifically for my workshop, Ben’s feedback on my slides and dry run provided invaluable feedback that let the ‘real’ workshop go smoothly.

  “Whoever he works with will be grateful to have his skills.”

• “I see Ben’s excellent organization, communication, and driven effort on display almost every day. I believe Ben is a cut above and doing nearly all the right things to redirect some of the organization’s issues. I hope he stays the course and keeps pushing in the way he is.”
• “You talk like a grad student”—Matthew Flatt
• “Ben is extremely actively with the Customer Support team and threads. He reaches out directly in situations that require immediate attention or to clarify a point. Ben shares information with the team and provides perspective on active tickets. A staple of the team.”
• “Ben always provides timely and well-explained ideas, solutions, and updates. I feel that Ben’s knowledge, willingness to collaborate, ability to share his expertise, and his consideration of everyone’s opinions makes him an excellent teammate and very easy to work with.”
• “One thing that stands out is the level of intellectual rigor Ben brings to technical discussions. Ben digs deep into problems, asks smart questions, and offers thoughtful solutions that show a solid understanding of both the details and the bigger picture.”
• “Ben has established himself as the subject matter expert when it comes to all things Git! Your knowledge and willingness to help/guide others has been a strong asset to the broader team!”
• “Ben’s communication skills have been exceptional when it comes to working through incidents. He’s done a great job coordinating investigations and post-incident reviews—keeping things clear, organized, and moving forward even in high-pressure situations.”
• “Ben’s PRs are incredibly clean! He contributes small PRs which are able to be reviewed quicker and more effectively, thereby ensuring that contributions are merged in as quickly as possible and that reviewers are able to very easily understand the changes. His PRs are well documented, and when he makes changes based on feedback to PRs he proactively and clearly communicates with the reviewers.”
• “Ben has been a great champion for PR cleanliness and clear commit messages. When he reviews PRs he’s able to effectively coach other engineers around the importance of clear commit messages, thereby sharing the knowledge and positively impacting the broader org. He’s able to do so while ensuring that high priority changes are not blocked.”
• “Ben works proactively to ensure that items impacting broader teams are handled in a timely fashion. One example is when a deprecation notice came up […] which wasn’t due for several months, Ben started a conversation around that on Slack to promote visibility and worked to remediate the issue as soon as he saw it.”

• “Ben is a reliable and communicative leader for the [internal Git] community. In particular he does an excellent job of balancing structure with flexibility. He provides enough guidance, communication, and logistical organization (i.e., scheduling meetings, handling documentation via GitHub, recruiting workshop leads) for the community to sustain itself but allows each participant the freedom to participate in whatever way and to whatever degree they desire. He has actively sought feedback from members of the community and has adjusted programming accordingly, such as adjusting meeting frequency and workshop content.

  “This balance was also reflected in his support of my workshop on the use of git log. He proactively checked in to see if I needed any assistance several times throughout the lead up to the workshop and provided advice when asked, but ultimately left all decisions up to me, and I never felt any pressure from him with regards to how much progress I had made or how to design the workshop. Finally, during the workshop he was an active participant and enabled others to participate as well.”

• “Ben’s greatest virtue is his genuine approach to mentorship. Each session, it feels like I am gaining valuable information that reveals the true and honest nature of engineering at Capital One. This has always been what makes me respect a person and mentor, and Ben has it in spades. Some key takeaways I have implemented in my own work are:

  • “Research before coding. In one of our discussions, we talked about how useful it is to write down notes and do research before launching into a solution. When I follow this principle closely, my work comes out much cleaner and ironically faster despite spending less time coding.
  • “Networking. Ben did a great job showing how networking can be engaging and down-to-earth, instead of an awkward exercise. This made it a lot easier to expand my influence in my org.
  • “Performance management. Ben did a great job outlining the realities and strategy of performance management, especially when it came to noting one’s accomplishments over time in a system of record.

  “To this end, Ben is a master-class in effective influence and a living example of Capital One values.”

• “After working with Ben for the last few months, I can confidently say that Ben has supported my growth as an engineer. I would try to model off of Ben for many soft skills like documentation and communications with peers. Ben has great practices for GitHub and Slack and I learn a lot from just observing him. His peer reviews are valuable, often pointing out areas of improvements in a direct and educational manner.”
• “His approach to ramping up—asking precise questions in the broader Slack channel—helped foster open technical dialogue and increased much-needed visibility across our landscape issues within the codebases.”
• “From a technical leadership perspective, he quickly became a strong voice for engineering excellence. He championed best practices, contributed high-quality code, and introduced improvements to Git workflows and our code quality tooling […]. His org-wide contributions […] helped elevate the engineering bar across the team.”
• “Ben joined our team for two sprints as part of a data migration initiative, where he was tasked with designing an automated data sync validation solution. He required virtually no ramp-up time and delivered an elegant, comprehensive solution that leveraged his prior experience effectively. His documentation stood out—it was not only technically thorough but also structured as a clear, narrative walkthrough that made it easy for others to engage with and understand. His documentation also came in handy for broader validation exercises across the org, as it was referenced by multiple teams for multiple incidents/deliverables.”
• “Collaboration with him was seamless. He was communicative, engaged, and thoughtful in his approach.”
• “One of the most talented folks I know at the company.”
• “Radiates a positive attitude like few people I know.”
• “Ben stood out by being able to engage on so many different topics at the same time.”
• “Ben’s feedback was crucial for delivering high quality code that would be easily maintainable for his team when they took over the service. I appreciate his comments on the deprecation of an internal library, which identified opportunities for a minor performance improvement and better documentation. Ben also contributed to the removal of a deprecated internal tool from the service, during which we had a discussion of the efficacy of the new formatting hooks and he made adjustments based on the feedback I provided. He went above and beyond the expectation to simply remove the dependency by providing tools for developers to continue delivering well-written code.”

• “Ben clearly and concisely explains Git concepts and practices in a manner accessible to people with all levels of experience. He actively fields questions and topics for discussion from attendees, and when addressing them frames the content in a manner tailored to the asker.

  “Ben’s knowledge of Git and version control in general is extensive. He is usually able to answer any questions off the top of his head along with an explanation of the history or reasoning behind a concept. When he does not know an answer he knows where to look, such as when he quickly found and explained the relevant Git source code for a question I asked regarding Git’s status output formats.

  “Ben’s ability to explain complex concepts (such as Git’s underlying data structures) in an easy to understand manner also speaks to his understanding of the domain. I have taken lessons from his material back to my team and can confidently say that we produce higher quality code with greater confidence as a result of Ben’s instruction on Git workflows, commit best practices, merge conflict resolution, and more.”

• “Ben is able to bring together a diverse audience into a conversation rather than just regurgitate information from slides. Helping facilitate different viewpoints will really assist Ben as he moves forward in his career.”
• “Ben’s communication style is effective, pragmatic, and fact-based. He is able to communicate in an easy-to-understand way for the technical and developer experience areas I have witnessed him in. I pulled Ben into discussions around Engineering Integrity with Distinguished Engineers knowing that he would be able to help craft a message for all audiences.”
• “The next Will Slattum”
• “Ben models working across silos by the level of his involvement with the innersource community. Known in the top 10 active participants, Ben is sought out as various topics and working group arise. We need more ‘Ben’s in the community to get the innersource flywheel spinning faster.”
• “Ben’s work educating our developers on Git is outstanding and sets an example for how engineers can own how they work and contribute back in a meaningful way.”
• “Ben shows up where most engineers back away from the opportunity. Partnering with central teams to provide feedback and then ‘do the work’, contributing directly, builds his credibility and sets him apart from many other engineers.”
• “Ben speaks with the right level of technical depth and context, tailoring his communication well working with Director+, senior associates, tech or product, etc.”
• “We depend on contributors like Ben with deep expertise in innersource, a language, or development practices to drive improvements that benefit engineers across the entire enterprise. Ben has quickly become one of the most influential external contributors.”
• “I am excited to work with Ben: he is a great teacher and sets an amazing example for the platform.”
• “Ben showed me some new tools and techniques that enabled me to write cleaner, more intuitive code. He was receptive of feedback when I reviewed his work and always open to two-way dialogue to work towards the best possible solution. He gave his full attention whenever we met even though the work was outside his normal scope.”
• “Provides incredibly thoughtful feedback”
• “Sometimes folks like to sit there and point fingers but not offer to help. Ben does not fall into this category: he actively partners with others to call out opportunities, bolster user experience, and add new features.”
• “A pleasure to work with”
• “The first thing I noticed about Ben was his attention to detail and commitment to producing the highest quality code. Ben is able to get up to speed on the most complex services and contribute thoughtful comments and suggestions via PR reviews. He always provides detailed explanations and background in his PRs, which helps us to learn and to understand the changes and the thought process behind them.”
• “Always brings a lot of energy to solving problems”
• “Willing to share his deep knowledge of Git”
• “Contributes in a style I wish I saw more of. Not afraid to try something even if it doesn’t pan out, and it often leads to great things.”
• “Ben goes above and beyond to make Capital One a great place to work.”
• “Ben displays endless generosity, passionate and effective communication, and remarkable influence.”
• “One of the best engineers on the platform”
• “I’m impressed by his code quality, attention to detail, critical thinking, and initiative to improve.”
• “A true servant leader”
• “Ben’s patience and willingness to share knowledge helped me feel like I could meaningfully contribute right away.”
• “Demonstrated strong ownership and preparation.”
• “Ben was super engaged and always asking the appropriate questions so him and his team can fully support these [projects] moving forward. He catches on quickly […] Ben is very knowledgeable, professional, and is very easy to work with and I look forward to working with him in the future.”
• “When automating AWS DMS task failover was identified as an opportunity to reduce RTO, Ben readily collaborated to assess options and develop an effective near-term solution.”
• “Ben asked clarifying questions when appropriate, identified and documented multiple issues and their resolutions, and consistently shared these lessons with the rest of his team to improve their understanding.”
• “I’m confident in Ben’s ability to manage [recovery] smoothly, but more importantly, his efforts to train the rest of his team on the details extends my confidence to the rest of his team.”
• “[Ben is] the Git expert around here!”
• “Communicative and responsive […] I felt completely supported and heard.”
• “Effective and generous”
• “Delivered quality solutions, identified gaps and weak points, brought great ideas to improve our tools and solve issues”
• “Maintained clear and frequent communication”
• “Proactive on code and design review”
• “Able to juggle multiple complex projects”
• “If Ben is on the call, it goes much smoother. He helps his team absorb new information.”
• “Ben is a good example [of] how to take ownership of tasks.”
• “Ben has an exemplary personality and tremendous knowledge anyone can learn from.”
• “I remembered Ben from my internship—he was always jumping around in Slack and helping folks out.”
• “Ben is very focused on ensuring that his designs and his code meets or exceeds requirements, meet high indicators for quality, and seamlessly integrate with the application architecture.”
• “Ben readily offers his help to work inside and outside his workspace and steps in to lend his expertise and bandwidth.”
• “[Ben] actively contributes to design sessions and brings innovative ideas for forward thinking designs that automate and simplify platform engineering and make it easier for platform administrators to perform administrative tasks.”
• “[Ben] has been able to deliver very strongly on results, [and] used his expertise to encourage adoption of proposed ideas.”
• “[Ben is] diligent and open to learn [and is] an impressive addition to the team.”

• “I worked with Ben remotely. He was an intern in the infrastructure team at Nuage Networks. Being on the infra team meant exposure to the ‘full-stack’ our systems at Nuage; from racking, stacking, and cabling in the lab, tracing and debugging virtualization and networking issues, and improving reliability of different aspects of the CI/CD pipeline.

  “During the interview process it was clear Ben was a bright developer. During his first few weeks, he was able to reduce the build time of one of the components most built by half (from 20 minutes to 10 minutes).

  “Later on, he built a general purpose caching system for improving the speed of some of a more convoluted build process.

  “He is a master of git, and was willing to tutor and mentor those who needed help. His communication skills were of the highest quality, in chat, by phone, video, and documentation of proposed projects and in code.

  “His ability to dive into and work on ‘legacy’ codebases was impressive and admirable. He quickly became the person sought after for code reviews because of his sharp insight and intuition.

  “I feel very happy to have worked with Ben. And I am very happy to have the chance to recommend him for all the great work he has done.” (John Naulty via LinkedIn)