Meet David Hauenstein

Title: Lead Developer

Joined Arc90 in: January 2008

My most prized possession: Stanley, my female cat.

In the fall of 2007, Dave Hauenstein was hired as a PHP developer by IDT, a telecommunications company in Newark, NJ. But within a day of accepting, he was still searching the job market.

“I was trying to find the next great place to work,” the 26-year-old recalled. “I realized that I was settling because it was in Newark, NJ.”

After finding Arc90’s job posting for a PHP developer on Authentic Jobs, Dave decided to send in his resume. The Westfield, NJ resident interviewed with the company the day before Thanksgiving and was hired on the spot.

“I’m really glad I decided to check the job boards one last time because Arc90 was exactly what I wanted,” Dave said. “Arc90 has a way of hiring great people. I am surrounded by smart and motivated people who love their jobs and what they are doing.”

Dave had the opportunity to meet his future co-workers at the company’s holiday party, before he even started the job.

“It was definitely a taste of what was going to come for the next couple of years,” he noted. “I felt instantly comfortable with everybody.”

Dave cites his expanded knowledge about architectural style as one of the biggest thing he’s learned since joining the Arc team.

“The most important thing that I learned at Arc90 is the ins and outs of REST,” he said. “I’m using HTTP the way it’s meant to be used and it has definitely changed the way I write web applications forever.”

Some of those web apps have been built for the public. Dave is half of the team behind TBUZZ, a Twitter bookmarklet recently released by Arc90. Rich Ziade, Arc90’s founder, came up with the concept and enlisted Dave’s expertise for building it.

“It was great to see TBUZZ get popular so quickly,” Dave said. “Wired Magazine tweeted about it soon after it was launched and the lead developer from Twitter also tweeted about it. It’s great to have something out there that tons of people used that you created.”

The Iselin, NJ native also built Get a Room, an application used within Arc90 for reserving conference rooms, with Jess Eddy.

“We were using an actual book to book rooms and everybody was getting confused because nobody would use it,” Dave said. “I wrote an API for room booking with an Ajax interface using jQuery. We all use it and it’s a lot easier than using the book.”

Dave wasn’t always a programmer; his coding skills grew out of a necessity. In 2003, his rock band, Site 3, needed a website. Dave didn’t have any experience with design or web development but wanted to take on the task.

“My friend took a HTML class in high school and she helped me get started,” he recalled. “I kept wanting to make the site better so I kept developing it. Animated gifs and frames were huge back then.”

Dave’s side project eventually turned into a business opportunity. While he was studying Economics at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, Dave founded Killer Creations Design Group with a friend.

“Other bands needed me to work on their websites so I kept doing it,” Dave remembered. “We started a company for band sites and expanded the business to include real estate companies and interior designers.”

During his sophomore year of college, Dave also worked for the Rutgers’ housing website. At this time, he had a formal introduction to PHP.

“That was my first real job doing web design and working with PHP,” he recalled. “I took a few C++ classes in college so PHP was really easy to pick up.”

Dave admits that if he weren’t programming, he would still be playing with his band, Post Break Tragedy. After releasing their first CD in 2004, All of This is Over Soon, the band toured the United States in an assortment of vehicles.

“We drove from New Jersey to California in my grandpa’s plumbing van,” Dave recalled. “We eventually bought a school bus. It wouldn’t go over 65 miles per hour and going downhill, you might hit 70 miles per hour.”

Dave’s love for music, along with his admiration for a certain award-winning guitarist, has turned into a running joke within the company.

“Somebody found out that I like John Mayer and I haven’t lived it down since,” he explained. “I’ll come into work and there will be an ad ripped out from a magazine with John Mayer on it, sitting at my desk.”