EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT
Austin Ronga
Junior Support Developer
Meet Austin – a budding star 💫 on our Development team! Austin has been an integral part of the FastTrack family since 2022, initially starting out as a Client Administrative Services (CAS) Admin and a Senior CAS Admin shortly thereafter. Now, he’s responsible for the development side, assisting clients and colleagues with stellar day-to-day technical support. On a personal level, Austin is a big gamer 🕹️ with his adorable cat, Mochi, always by his side. 😍
Keep reading to get to know more about our friend, Austin.
What is your current position with FastTrack?
Junior Support Developer, been doing it a little over half a year now.
What is your typical workday like?
I typically spend my days monitoring Zendesk for tickets that come in pertaining to our caseworker sites and their related services. I do anything from helping clients diagnose and rectify smaller blips to working with our development team to update or implement features of our claimant system.
Do you work with any specific customers?
My work is spread across all of our customers, however my most detailed work tends to be with The Standard.
Tell us about your career path with FastTrack. Have you held any other position(s) within the company?
I’ve held several positions within FastTrack! I started as a Client Administrative Services (CAS) admin, and proceeded to become the Senior CAS Admin in a little over 6 months. I held that position for about a year and a half, and now I’m this, doing development work!
What is something you love about working for FastTrack?
I mean, the people, right? The people/culture is one of the most pertinent factors in whether or not going to work is a pleasant or dreadful experience. I would describe this place as having a culture of helping each other out and recognizing hard work. 💪
Do you have any accomplishments within the organization you’re particularly proud of?
My diligent and productive work within the company has resulted in being promoted every year; I’m certainly quite proud of that. 🙌
What is your favorite media or series?
Always such a difficult question to answer. 🤔 Favorite Authors are Oscar Wilde and Dostoevsky, with an honorable mention to Kafka for being some of the first literature I ever read in a foreign language. Favorite show is hard to say, comfort show is How I Met Your Mother, but I wouldn’t call it “good” haha! Grew up watching Dragonball Z as my favorite show. Recently, and on a much more serious note, Shogun is the most well-written and well-acted show I’ve seen in a LONG time (maybe ever?)– it also does a fantastic job of Show Don’t Tell and treating its audience like they’re intelligent and paying attention; something I feel is missing from most modern media.
Do you have any pets?
My cat Mochi 🐈 is the sweetest, best cat in the whole world, full stop. She’s a Tortoiseshell cat with an attitude to match and I just love her more than life itself. I have submitted the maximum number of pictures of her as is possible so everyone can see how lovely she is. 💛
Do you have any hobbies or special interests?
I’ve been playing video games 🕹️ since I was 6 years old. My favorite series is either the Mass Effect series or the Soulsborne series (however, without a Playstation I’ve never been able to play Bloodborne).
What type of activities are you most likely to be up to on the weekends?
If I’m not at home playing video games, which I most likely am, my partner and I like to go mini-golfing or to farmer’s markets. I’m always looking for more Chicken of the Woods mushrooms, so if you know a spot, email me!
What is your favorite vacation destination?
My favorite vacation destination is “home”. 🏠 I would always prefer to stay home with my cat than have to leave her behind to go somewhere that doesn’t have all of the amenities and niceties of my home.
However, I’d love to go to Germany one day considering I speak the language and have never been, but ultimately I’d rather just move there than have to visit and leave.
What person would you most like to switch places with for a day?
I don’t really want to switch places with anyone, I think that’s a fruitless want. What would or even could I do as someone else that would impact my life once I returned? It would only end in envy, lol, it sounds terrible. 😆
What’s the first thing you would do if you won the lottery?
Buy a normal-sized house that I could start a family in, pay off my student loans, and then put the rest in a high-yield savings account and only spend the interest.
What is your favorite 21st century innovation?
I mean hopefully it hasn’t happened yet? We have 75 more years left in the century, seems premature to call one my favorite. 20th century has the internet, which is the basis of most modern amenities, so I’ll go with that for 20th century innovations and leave 21st for another 60 years. 😆
What’s something you loved doing as a kid? Do you still do it now?
Learning foreign languages and working with computers (and by extension playing video games) have always been high up on the list of stuff I like to do, and that is how I spend the majority of my free time as an adult.
What are your top three most overused words/phrases?
‘”Ostensibly”. “Devastating”. and “Fascinating”
What’s a surprising fact about yourself?
I can count to 10 and ask for help in something like 7 languages? I don’t know if that’s particularly surprising.
If there was a movie made about your life, who would you want the narrator to be?
Easy question, prime Werner Herzog, right? He’s the narration king. David Attenborough is a close second.
Connect with Austin on LinkedIn
