I'm John, and I want to work for Hubspot.
I'm John , and I want to work for Hubspot.
I'm John, and I want to work for Hubspot.
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About
but that doesn't tell you all that much about me. I'm a frontend focused software and web engineer with a passion for tinkering. In general, I build to learn. That's a nice summary of what's happening here with all of these animations and interactions. GSAP is one of my current experimentation mediums. But why do I want to work for HubSpot?
Why HubSpot?
We'll go ahead and break this into two sections, one for the work, and one for the culture.
The Work
I love the frontend. I find fulfilling work in helping users better interface with software. It doesn't matter whether that software is an internal tool or a user facing feature. I get amped to build nuanced -- okay, sometimes not so nuanced -- experiences. Sometimes that involves pushing the envelope and learning what is standing in the way between a customer and what would best serve them. One thing is certain in the work though, and I've seen it in every HubSpot engineering job listing so far. The GTM strategy, and more importantly the customers, aren't abstracted away from engineering. The more engineers truly understand the customer, the better the solutions get. When you get close to the product and the customer, it's easy to realize that the product is the solution. The virtuous cycle here might look like learning customer blockers, solving for the customer, and earning the trust of new customers.
But, how have I implemented this in previous roles? After all, engineers need to make meaningful, measurable, and relevant contributions. In my previous role as a Frontend Web Engineer at Ionic, the customers were the millions of people who visited Ionic domains during my tenure. That's developers and enterprise clients looking to quickly find info relevant to them. The product then, was every web property of every Ionic product. This means I interfaced weekly at minimum with marketing and design to ensure Ionic's marketing sites were having the intended impact. This interfacing led to a few key implementations like a revamped analytics approach that paired several broad reports with other razor sharp reports about potentially high impact components. That analyitics approach cemented a key strategy for web that I now call the bar, pill, card tactic. Announcement bars were losing reach in busy seasons with perpetual announcements all living one after the other at the top of every page. So web collorated with design and marketing to implement a strategy. We would prioritize the most relevant and important updates in announcement bars, distill secondary announcements for specific products into pill buttons over the heading tags on the relevant product home pages, and push more frequent announcements into a latest news section of cards on the Ionic homepage. This resulted in a net increase of page clicks by 11%, 7% of which was split between the bars, pills, and cards. That's a little insight into how I solve for the customer.
The Culture
The HubSpot Culture Code mentions building two products, one for their customers, and one for their employees. A traditional engineering mindset might lead some to believe that engineers build the product for customers, and that HR builds the product for employees. Those who have taken time to thoughfully consume all the information in the culture code know that every employee takes part in building the product of culture. Here is the HubSpot secret sauce, though (in my opinion). The culture and the work give back and forth. A great culture makes the product better, and a great product makes the culture better. If that sort of sounds like another virtuous cycle, it's because it is. Let's zoom in for a second, since I'm pitching myself here. How would I contribute to improving the culture at HubSpot. Well, my philosophy has about one hundred thousand spokes, but to boil it down, my goal is to make my teammates days better. At work, that means building to avoid technical debt and bottlenecks. Out of work that means taking time to relax and refresh so that I can come to my meetings attentive and ready to contribute.
John Wheeler, frontend software engineer
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