Michael Birk is a CTO at Baotris, Inc at Baotris. Colleagues describe him as "To put it bluntly: Michael is spectacular.
When I was joining the team at Scribd, he was invaluable as a reference who could both clearly map out our relatively complex architecture, as well as dig deep into any piece of it.
On top of being a superlative engineer and architect, he appears to never sleep. On the occasional session burning the midnight oil, Birk would inevitably be online and available. The last time I had a "drop what I'm doing and fix this bug" type bug, Birk had fixed it before I got home to my computer.
I occasionally disagreed with him when trying to make architectural decisions. I would propose something that I thought was beautiful, and he would strike eight features because they weren't pragmatic. On every occasion, he was right.
What else? Birk is a pleasure to work with. He is articulate. He can methodically explain a complicated problem and make sure you understand it. And he's tremendously kind. When mistakes are made, he's not big on blame so much as making sure we know why they happened so they don't happen again.
I could go on for some time. I truly cannot give Michael enough praise.", "Michael is above all else a class act. He has an amazing ability to solve contemptibly painful problems with sensible solutions that are always exceptionally well-written, maintainable, and understandable. And his care extends beyond code; being able to consult Michael on anything, no matter the issue, and receive his always gracious perspective and knowledge has been unequivocally invaluable. His composed intelligence, sincere modesty, and youthful spirit has made it a true pleasure to work with him.", and "Michael was always a "go to" developer who was both laid-back and very intense. In my interactions with him working on the Versant Java interface, I always left better informed, and confident that all issues would be resolved."