Robert Prince (he/him) joined Anchore in May 2020 as a Senior Automation/Release Engineer, going back to his roots as an individual contributor after several years in leadership roles. In this Humans of Anchore profile, we sat down with Robert to talk about his transition back to development, having a safe work environment to explore and learn, and riding the wave of container security.
Leadership roles come with a host of responsibilities like budgeting, managing people and their professional development, building and maintaining relationships with strategic partners, and reporting to the board. Though he enjoyed those responsibilities while he held them, Robert wanted to connect with hands-on development again. Thankfully Anchore presented him with the perfect opportunity to do so.
“I feel comfortable putting my head down, doing tactical work, and not having to worry about people managing or strategic decision making. One reason for that is Anchore’s leadership team: it’s obvious that they’re at the top of their game, and to me that is very comforting.
A lot of companies talk about being kind to each other, but it’s more than talk here; kindness is non-negotiable, and that’s one of the things that pulled me in and keeps me here. Coming from environments where that hasn’t always been the case, it’s taken me some time to internalize it. Once I understood that this company provides a kindness-based, trust first culture - I found it freeing. It lets me focus with less distraction.”
Robert is part of the DevOps group, focusing on automation of tools and the release process.
“The container orchestration and security space is hot right now. Software development supply chain is a concept that few outside of infrastructure tech talked much about before. Now people are starting to pay attention. Anchore is at the center of what people actually need right now - it’s really fun to be involved in a company that is riding that wave.
You can almost see the change in infrastructure and tooling happening in real time. It reminds me of the massive change that happened when cloud computing was commoditized: some things got much simpler but when you go beyond “Hello, World” - there’s new layers of complexity. It means that you’re constantly learning while applying what you already know. I don’t have all the answers but I’m with a well rounded team. Sometimes I mentor folks, and sometimes they mentor me. I feel lucky to be part of Anchore.”
