Great People: Introducing Ross Gratton

A drum roll please for our latest Great State debut... introducing Ross Gratton, our new Head of Engineering!

In this quick fire introduction he's managed to expertly weave in not one, but two film references. What does the Shawshank Redemption have to do with quality technical engineering you ask? You'll have to read on to find out.

Who are you and what do you do?

I'm Ross, I'm Head of Engineering here at Great State. My role is to help the agency to conceive, create and deliver fantastic digital experiences to the highest standards of quality and technical excellence. That's pretty lofty, strong focus should be on the word help, GS has a wonderfully skilled and talented engineering team, my role is a lot to do with supporting and guiding that team to do the best possible work they can.

How did you get to be here?

"I ran clear across Alabama ... I just kept going".

I've been in the web development industry for approx. 20 years professionally, longer if you count staying up all night listening to Propellerheads writing HTML in my bedroom.

Like most of my vintage in this industry I've experienced and worked through huge shifts and advancements in technologies and possibilities. This forced a need to continually learn, initially that learning was always across technologies, as my career advanced, I found real pleasure and purpose in working and problem solving with people as well as technologies. I applied the student mindset to becoming a manager and a leader.

Throughout my career I've ridden a wave of equal parts luck and hard work to join and work with wonderful agencies, companies and brands across many sectors and geographies, I like to call it “Forest Gumping”. Unlike Forest however my latest adventure isn't in a national "Ping Pong" team or the Vietnam War, it's here, with the talented and driven people of Great State.

What are you excited to get started working on?

We've got some fantastic projects happening currently in the digital experience space, that I'm really excited to be working on, but over and above that being reasonably new to the company I'm still building relationships with the immediate and wider teams and getting to grips with our processes, finding places where I can bring some of my experiences into what we already do so well and contribute to the ever increasing standards that we hold ourselves to. 

How do you know when you’ve produced something great?

Time, I think that only becomes known in time. You can get a good feeling for having done a good job, having maxed out your skills and pushed through challenges to have produced something you feel is a good representation for what you're capable of. But great doesn't come from your assessment of what you've produced, it comes from how it lives and breathes, how it stands up to the rigours of what's required of it, and how it ultimately get's considered over time.

Take for example the film Shawshank Redemption, I believe this is perhaps the most rolled out example of this, not a commercial or critical success in theatres or the eyes of critics on release. But over time, it's themes of hope, redemption, friendship, coupled with the historic performances and chemistry of Morgan Freeman and Tim Robins have landed it as a stalwart in the conversation of best movie of all time. Simply put, it's great!

Outside of work, what excites you?

Honestly, a quiet morning actually getting to finish a coffee. I have 5 year old twins, finding time for myself is a challenge. Before children and covid (probably an excuse) I was pretty active, I'm excited to get my fitness back, I've just started playing Padel (who hasn't), I get excited when I get a chance to go and play.

Motorcycles and Cars, a bit cliche but there you go, I've always ridden motorcycles and managed to build one during covid. A Sunday isn't complete without the background hum of F1 or MotoGP.

I realise that is all rather analogue for someone working in tech, of course this industry excites me, that's why I work in it, but I think that's the point, balance and switching off from tech / work is important.

What is the future of tech looking like to you?

That's a broad question, I think the only thing we can say for sure is not what it looks like now. Obviously, there are those two weighty letters A.I, with my level of insight it's impossible to predict where that goes, but I do think that there's a progression pattern we can follow and apply to AI to see a future in some more specific areas.

Taking development / coding, we can apply some logic to suggest a certain future, not certain or wholistic, but as aspect. Here goes;

• Developers are curious, they build and they look for efficiencies.
• This trait has led to a demonstrable trend towards building tools. We once wrote code to build a product, now we write code to build tools and use tools to build products.
• This trend will continue, and we're already seeing these tools taking advantage of AI.

Now permit me a little leap, this is logic mixed with imagination. The fastest way to communicate is spoken word (unless we ramble or have a particularly hard to understand accent, I'm looking at you Bristol), however the density, complexity and nuance of spoken language doesn't, or hasn't, been a good fit for the structured, binary world of programming.

Fire up the theme music, hit the pyro and enter AI. We have seen what AI can do for distilling and making sense of language, we've also seen what it can do in generating code. These capabilities will continue to improve, I see a future where the speed of our spoken language, coupled with the increasing capability of AI, and the desire for developers to build tools, coalesces in what I'm going to call "Speak and Tweak" programming, mark the date, I coined that, I'm claiming it! Or perhaps less quirkily Natural Language Programming.

Don't ask me what it looks like, that's beyond my puny intellect, but just watch!

Ask a question back. What do you want to know?

Why do so many ugly cars get made?

Want to chat all thing car, film and tech with Ross? Don't blame you. Ping him a message at ross.gratton@greatstate.co.