Meet The Kajabi Team: Patrick MacDowell

Welcome Back to another fun-filled Meet The Kajabi Team Series!

In this series of blogs, we introduce you to some of our awesome Kajabi team members so you can get to know the people that support you and your business here at Kajabi.

Today we're going to introduce you to Mobile Team Dev Manager Patrick MacDowell.

Name: Patrick MacDowell

Job Title: Mobile Team Dev Manager

What do you do at Kajabi?

A portion of my time is spent giving computers instructions.

I do some coding / engineering when time permits, but the majority of my time these days is spent building teams.

My primary job as a Dev Manager is to help build up and hire engineers for my team, keep us on track to meet deadlines, and support the mobile department in any way I can.

Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started working for Kajabi.

I’ve been a Software dev since 2012 or so and thoroughly enjoy programming; I’m one of those nerds who legitimately enjoys my job and has a great time when building something from nothing.

I started working at Kajabi in early 2019 because I was interested in something new and I fell in love with Kajabi’s mission as well as their software approach; finding a culture like this is a rare and golden opportunity that I did not want to pass up. 

I worked as the Lead / Senior Android developer for a couple of years and have since transitioned into the Manager for the mobile team.

What is a typical workday like at Kajabi?

Days vary depending on the needs of the team. 

There are some mornings where I have very few meetings and work as a software engineer for many hours. I work on any active or known bugs, I look into any newly introduced issues, and I help work on new features. 

Most days I spend in meetings with various departments to help plan and build our mobile department, our apps, and the direction we are moving. I work with our product manager quite a bit and discuss our customer’s needs and how we can create software that will make them more successful. 

What’s your favorite part of working for Kajabi?

Combination of my coworkers and the relaxed environment.

When the pandemic hit, Kajabi didn’t hesitate for a moment in regards to our safety; we have been perma-remote since early March 2020 in order to keep us safe. The company has since continued to make us feel included, appreciated, and has taken many steps to help better our lives during a global pandemic. 

My coworkers are all good people. We are able to switch from a discussion regarding complex software architecture to how the latest episode of a favorite show was amazing in mere seconds and enjoy the conversations. I also really appreciate that every Kajabi employee legitimately wants to help our customers; they honestly, truly want to provide customers an amazing experience and we tend to rally around that whenever we discuss what we are working on.  

What’s your spirit animal?

Penguins. They are clumsy on land, adorable, and always dressed in formal attire.

What’s something about your job people wouldn't expect?

There is very little math involved in what I do. People always say they could not program because they are bad at math, but truthfully, I’ve only ever had to do serious math work on one project around 5 years ago!

What’s the most rewarding part of working for Kajabi?

I would not have had a good answer to this prior to the Impact Summit, but after seeing those many hundreds of people getting so excited about growing their business, I realized I was helping a huge number of people create a legacy for their families, and that is freaking awesome.

What emoji are you?

Any of the various 'Thank You' emojis because I spend the majority of my time ridiculously grateful to others at this company for their help.

What’s the coolest thing you’re working on right now?

I am researching how we can help customers create, build, and manage their business from their mobile devices.

What personal item represents you best? 

I’ve been a gamer since I was old enough to reach the TV and set up my Nintendo. My games and platform of choice have changed over the years, but I still thoroughly enjoy a large number of titles. The photo is of a SNES controller which was my second Game system and, arguably, the one I spent the most time with in my younger years as some of my all-time favorites are on that platform.

If you were a knowledge entrepreneur, what type of knowledge product would you create and on what topic? 

Coincidentally I have made a course and published it using Kajabi! I created a course that is designed to help people with zero experience in software engineering move into a career in the field as a full-fledged developer in as little as 6 months. 

It was both rewarding and enlightening to see where our customers' pain points were and helped shape new opinions on what and how we should design things.

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