Meet Updater: Gretchen Altman, Product Manager
This week, we’re spotlighting our awesome Product Manager, Gretchen Altman. She shares a few of her favorite memories since coming to Updater three years ago, how she works alongside such a motivated team, and just how she’d react in a zombie apocalypse. Here’s just a slice of what she has to say about life at Updater:
Tell us about your role at Updater…
Officially, I’m the Product Manager, but that’s probably selling myself short. I work on product, onboarding, client success, and anything else in between (anything from talking on the phone to a client and creating wireframes for a new feature to taking out the trash). It’s a startup after all, so we’re all in it together.
How long have you been working at Updater?
Since Updater’s birth, or thereabouts. Almost 3 years.
Do you have a moving horror story?
When I first moved to New York, I didn’t want to commit to a place right away, so my boyfriend and I ended up renting a place in Brooklyn for a month. What we didn’t know at the time was that the apartment also came equipped with a cat. It’d get cat crazy at night and run up and down the apartment caterwauling so loud. We’re talking 4 AM. He would also bring his friends home with him through the kitchen window.
What’s your best piece of moving advice?
Find a nice place, and stay there. If you have to move, use Updater (cue shameless Updater plug).
If your life was made into a TV series, which celebrity would play you?
What’s the first website/app you check in the morning?
The Skimm
What’s your favorite Updater memory?
We took a ski trip in January to the Poconos that was really awesome and brought us closer as a team. Plus, we watched Frozen.
What’s one thing about the relocation industry that you didn’t know before working at Updater?
I had no concept of how moving companies were organized, such as which agents belong to which van lines. Still waters run deep.
If human limbs could be made from one kind of substance (e.g. Jello), what would you choose for your own body? Why?
Adamantium, like Wolverine. Because it’s Wolverine.
In your opinion, what’s one of Updater’s biggest contributions to the relocation industry?
It’s amazing that we’re going to help colleges and universities get their students completing their moving tasks, which most universities don’t even do. I know I NEVER forwarded my mail or updated my accounts while I was in college.
What’s your favorite part about working at Updater?
Hands down, the people. We have an amazingly talented and driven group.
In a Tweet, describe the office culture at Updater.
Appropriately inappropriate at all times #truth #blessed
What motivates you to come to work everyday?
It’s the people (I know, I know, enough about how awesome your team is). For real, though, I want to come to work because it’s like hanging out with your best friends… and working too… and eating A LOT of popcorn.
If you could travel to work everyday on a vehicle without wheels (think: hovercraft, broom), what would you choose?
The hoverboard from Back to the Future
It’s the apocalypse. Where do you hide?
In NYC? You don’t – there’s no hope. #wompwomp
If you wrote a personal memoir, what would its title be?
“No Really, That’s What She Said” or “Ponderings of a Bwack Widdle Baby.”
What’s your favorite quote?
“If Benjamin were an ice cream flavor, he’d be pralines and dick.”
If you were a food, what kind would you be? Why?
A hot dog because they are delicious and terrible for you.
What song best describes how you work?
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late
Shut Up and Dance
Five More Hours
What’s your favorite Saturday Night Live skit?
Hometown:
Chesapeake, VA
More Updater Life
Changes to Updater’s team
16 August 2022
Updater raises $215M to accelerate product, design, data, and engineering
19 May 2022
