S10 E13: Josh Levine, Chess.com

Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Noah Labhart - Startup Founder & CTO

Tech News, News, Business, Technology, Entrepreneurship, Careers

4.6 • 216 Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2024

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Josh Levine lives in Brooklyn, NY. He started programming when he was 6 years old, when his Dad brought home an Apple 2. He realized that though there wasn't enough legos in the world to support his creativity, he could get enough RAM. Growing up, he had a deep relationship with chess, setting up his own chess program. In fact, he states that he learned everything he knows about programming - by programming chess. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 kids. He loves karaoke, and is a musician, with his music online under the name Heavy Pennies. In 2011, Josh joined an amazing online game website, when they started supporting his favorite game variant. Ten years later, he researched this company and their technology to see how it worked. He applied for one of the jobs, got rejected, but then quickly got a call from the CEO, who liked his application. This is Josh's creation story at Chess.com. Our Sponsors: * Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.com * Check out Red Hat: https://www.redhat.com * Check out Vanta: https://vanta.com/CODESTORY Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This episode is sponsored by AMI. Hardware asset management is hard, and most companies are wasting time and effort on a bad solution.
0:08.2	Asset Management International, or AMI, has been making software to simplify the ham process for over 20 years.
0:15.7	Their automated tools help companies keep tabs on their equipment, from storage to what's on your desk.
0:21.2	Head over to AMITracks.com to request a demo today.
0:26.6	When the COVID lockdowns happened, Chess.com saw traffic spike 4X over their current water level.
0:33.8	And it would go country by country.
0:35.4	It would just, it came in a wave as folks started to stay home and wonder,
0:38.8	what do I do with my time now that I can't go outside?
0:41.3	Many millions of people turned to chess.
0:43.6	First of all, that's great.
0:44.8	Second of all, it's a shard databases and switch to application layer joins and get new hardware and all sorts of stuff was happening through 2020.
0:53.1	And the other thing that happened
0:54.6	is this incredible mini-series called The Queen's Gambit came out on Netflix and everybody
1:01.0	was watching that. And the traffic went 4X again. My name is Josh Levine and I'm the CTO at
1:09.1	chess.com.
1:12.7	This is Code Story.
1:15.4	A podcast bringing you interviews with tech visionaries.
1:18.4	It's six months moonlighting.
1:19.9	It's nice and out of the backcans.
1:21.8	Who share what it takes to change in industry.
1:24.4	I don't exactly know what to do next.
1:25.7	It took many goes to get right.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Noah Labhart - Startup Founder & CTO, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Noah Labhart - Startup Founder & CTO and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.