Meet Our Team: Rasha, Support Developer
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Meet Rasha, a Fastmail developer, who untangles customer issues with technical expertise.
Fastmail’s support team provides customers with solutions, not just answers. When you need more technical help, our support team needs solutions, too_—_and here’s where they go: Meet Rasha, a developer on Fastmail’s team.
Name: Rasha Moumneh Role: Support Developer
What do you work on? I’m a support developer, so I work closely with the support and development teams to untangle customer problems that require a high level of technical intervention.
How long have you been working at Fastmail? How did you get involved? Initially, I joined Fastmail as a customer support agent in 2019. I’m a late in life career changer_—_I had just quit my non-profit job and started learning programming, so I wanted to get my foot in the door in the industry. Customer support was a great entry point for me. When I graduated from my program, our CTO Rik reached out to me with an idea to create a new position that bridged the gap between the development and support teams. It was a perfect fit!
What’s a project that you’ve worked on that you’re proud of? The interesting thing about being new to the field is that you have the opportunity to figure out what it is you really like doing. Although I trained primarily as a JavaScript developer with a frontend focus, I love doing backend work, too. Fastmail has a good amount of Perl, and it’s been a lot of fun learning a new language that makes you think differently about how you approach a problem than you might be used to.
What other projects inspire you? Two non-profits whose work I really admire and follow closely are the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which advocates for people’s rights in the digital world, and the Center for Constitutional Rights, a social justice organization that takes on difficult issues that few others do.
What are your favorite Fastmail features? I really appreciate Fastmail’s focus on privacy. I was always alarmed at the sheer breadth and normalization of the online surveillance industry, but figuring out how to push back against that felt really confusing and overwhelming. Since starting work here I’ve become empowered to actually take steps to reduce my trackable footprint on the internet. Turns out it’s neither impossible nor difficult!
I also think that Fastmail’s work to replace IMAP with an open, universal email standard*—*JMAP_—_is immensely cool!
From an app perspective, I love the flexibility and power that Fastmail’s rules and filters offer.
What’s your most used piece of technology? I love my Bose QuietComfort 25 headphones. I wear them pretty much all day, every day when I’m working. A lot of times I don’t even listen to anything on them and I just use the noise cancelling feature to help me focus. Putting them on has become a mental cue in the morning that it’s time to shift to work mode.
What are you watching and listening to these days? I watch a lot of different shows, but my most long-standing series is The Walking Dead. Before that it was Game of Thrones, but we don’t talk about that show anymore >_< .
Right now I’m listening to a lot of Arabic funk and soul from the 70s and 80s. Habibi Funk records is re-releasing a lot of awesome stuff from across the region, and I’m always finding fantastic new music through them.
What do you like to do outside of work? I’m a hobbyist woodworker, and I have a small woodshop set up in my garage. The things I make are mostly pretty janky, but it’s a lot of fun and very meditative. I also play videogames on my PlayStation, and often code for fun. Right now I’m building a spotify-connected sunrise alarm clock with a Rasbperry Pi.
Do you do any volunteer work? I’ve been getting more involved with Code for Philly, which is a fantastic organization of civic minded technologists working on various community oriented projects. Coming from the non-profit world, I love that I can continue to work on social justice issues that are important to me but from a completely different perspective and with an entirely new skillset.
What’s your favorite animal? All of them! I’m a big animal person_—_I have 5 cats and a dog and I can’t imagine living without them.
Any Fastmail staffers you want to brag on? Also all of them! One of the best things about working at Fastmail is the people. Everyone is so open, kind, and generous with their time. It’s quite nerve wracking making the jump into a programming career, and imposter syndrome can really mess with your head. But having a supportive team of people who are genuinely invested in my success has made all the difference for me.
What do you like the best about your work at Fastmail? I’m pretty proud that I was able to make such a huge career shift at this point in my life. It was a scary, uncertain thing, but I’m very glad I took the risk and did it. It’s a great feeling to be able to come to work every day with a sense of curiosity and genuine interest in what you do.
At Fastmail, we work on making email better for everyone. Building an incredible team is an important part of our company and our values. Check out our job listings for opportunities to join our team!