Working at Modality
Meet Albert
Modality's Einstein: software engineer Albert in the spotlight
He has been part of our team for over 20 years and was already working on algorithms when nobody had heard of them yet. However, software engineer Albert prefers to stay out of the spotlight until after work. Fortunately for us, he has finally agreed to an interview -learn more about Albert below!
Econometrics within Modality
Albert is our very own Einstein. While studying econometrics, he learned to approach business problems through a mathematical lens. During his time at Erasmus University Rotterdam, Albert had to choose a specialisation: finance, marketing or logistics. His decision should come as no surprise. In his opinion, there is too much ‘hot air’ in finances and marketing (a claim that the author of this piece emphatically disputes!). What draws Albert to logistics is the fact that it involves a physical process, unlike, let’s say, pension funds. That makes a mathematical approach to the process concrete and less abstract. For his graduation project, Albert focused on a taxi company, investigating the possibilities for developing a program that uses algorithms to calculate the optimal routing for transporting disabled passengers. Following his graduation, Albert ended up working at a one-man company that developed software for distribution centres supplying supermarkets. Albert became a full-time programmer here. When the growth of this company started to stagnate, someone alerted him to a vacancy at a company that specialises in software development for the logistics sector. Although this company consisted of a small team, it had a stable and large customer portfolio and Albert had tons of experience with the development language it used. You can probably guess the name of this specific company 😉. And that is how on the 10th of May 2004 Albert became employee number six.
Albert:
"What I appreciate about Modality is that it is a stable employer. Whether times were turbulent or not, there has always been enough work and we have grown steadily by about one employee per year."
Practice-based programming
Fortunately, Albert is still content after all these years. In his experience, Modality is a stable employer that has experienced steady growth over the years. Albert appreciates the direct lines of communication and the fact that everyone knows about each other’s expertise and what to expect from one another. Over the years, the facilities have improved and the company offices have become more modern. At times, Albert can secretly get nostalgic about those early days though when the team was still very small and close-knit and everyone worked together in the same space. He also loved the company office at the Waalhaven, where the beautiful view of the ships out on the water kept him and his colleagues connected to daily practice.
In this interview, we look to both the past and the future. One thing that Albert would still like to do is work on optimisations and apply his mathematical perspective to this; how many movements a crane has to perform to move a container and in what order. Having worked on software solutions for inland container terminals and carriers for so long, he has become increasingly attuned to the requirements of users. Of course, nothing makes his day more than seeing someone use a product in practice that he has co-developed.
Out of your head, towards physical, on stage
Due to the analytical nature of his job, Albert often finds himself ‘stuck in his head’. For about ten years now, he has found a way to get out of his head though; performing on stage. Albert is member of a Rotterdam-based theatre group and has participated in several performances. We were also able to admire him on the screen, when his theatre group (temporarily) switched to making video productions during the pandemic. Although Albert found this form of acting interesting, his true passion lies in performing on stage. Shooting movie scenes involves a lot of waiting and performing multiple takes for a single shot. On stage, everything must be done right the first time. There is constant interaction with other actors, which also involves a lot of improvisation. One day, Albert hopes to play the lead role or perform his own monologue. In the meantime, he is having a ball with our own puppet theatre 😉.
