"Wael was the hub around which ideas began to accumulate," explains Scaife. "Between the two of us, we're very different in terms of our character, but there's a support mechanism." They're the first to admit that the company takes centre-stage. "It defines us and who we are," says Wansa. "What I do at work gives me so much satisfaction. I don't even really know that many people outside the company." Adds Scaife, "The company has kind of an extended life."
It's a common experience for many of those working in the technology industry. Says Belfast-born Ronan O'Boyle (30), business manager for Limerick new media company Into White: "It's uncommon for people in this area to work nine to five." He frequently takes work home on his laptop or spends weekends in the office and is quick to point out that while salaries may be good, hours are long.
"Certainly the salaries are a bonus and an incentive to stay in [technology] but also what is not always recognised is that these jobs also require a lot of hard work and demand the extra hours." Indeed, Wael Wansa has been so busy with work that he hasn't had time to move into an apartment he rented before Christmas.
But everyone insists that although the salaries are nice, they're secondary to simply enjoying work. "It would be very glib to say money isn't some sort of attraction," begins Scaife. "But you don't think about it that much," concludes Wansa. "You don't have time to think about it."
"Being a nerd is a full-time job," jokes Alex Bacik (25), the hostmaster for Internet service provider Club Internet. Out-of-work hours are often taken up by playing computer games, programming, Internet magazines, and "trying out new stuff on my PC," he says, adding that 90 per cent of his friends also work at tech-related jobs.
For most technology workers, after-work fun involves technology as well. Martin Feeney has been known to crawl into bed at 5 a.m. after waging battle with alien forces in the interactive world of computer games, and he says he likes to come home and do some personal programming or fiddle with music or 3D design programs. However, O'Boyle says he tries to avoid distractions like computer games. "I just don't have the time. Otherwise I'd be spending all my waking time in front of a screen," he laughs.
Nonetheless, Bacik insists he and his friends don't obsessively talk shop. "Very rarely. It's boring," he says. It can be, agrees Maura McHugh. "It's the automatic subject! We have rules when we have people to dinner - no shop talk. But we always come around to it."
She came to technology indirectly, working first at a PhD in literature at Trinity College that she later abandoned for computers, which she'd grown interested in because of the Internet. "I was really thrown in at the deep end without any technical knowledge behind me," she says. But she has no regrets for leaving the arts. "The opportunities are just tremendous," she says. And despite tech's male-oriented image, "Gender isn't an issue," she says. "The only thing they care about is if you can do the job."
And at the end of the day, it's the job that consistently seems to appeal to people working in technology. For McHugh, it's the element of puzzle-solving. "It's learning new stuff - cool ways to do things," says Feeney.
Programmers typically don't mind so much what it is that they're creating so much as how they do it - "They're interested in the technology underlying it," he says.
Bacik stumbled into his job when "I just sort of accidentally forgot my exams (at UCD, in engineering) and I've been here ever since". A computer fanatic since the age of 10, he says the attraction is "basically, just doing cool stuff with computers. Interesting, useful stuff. Setting stuff up from scratch."
"You're seeing the future becoming tangible," says Scaife. "If you're an impatient individual, you'll like technology." Adds Wansa, "There's something in it that dazzles and attracts you."