I haven’t written in a while; life happens. I do have a few more interviews to write about since I wrote last. But that’s not what I am writing about today.
Today, January 24, 2024, is my 2,380th day at Indeed; I started here April 25, 2016. This is now officially the longest I have ever been at one employer. I worked at Claris from June 14, 1988 through March 15, 1996, which is 2,379 days.
So, what makes Indeed special enough that I have stayed for almost 8 years? Claris was a fantastic place to work; the only reason I left is that I was not acquiring new skills and I had limited opportunities for growth.
That has certainly never been the case at Indeed. I was initially hired to work on the web front end of http://www.indeed.com, despite only knowing enough Java to pass a summer course in 1997, and having never worked on a web-based product. For at least two years, I came home every night with my head spinning; I learned more during that time that at any time since college and my first two years afterwards (including my first couple of years at Claris). That team also had the iOS Job Search app in its portfolio, so I was able to expand my iOS skills at the same time. The iOS app exposed me to a new-to-me way of writing apps, using webviews to reflect Indeed pages for most of the work. I also had to learn how to write code on both the client-side and server-side for web-based APIs.
That learning continues. I worked on a team that developed a large Federated GraphQL server with a lot in individual smaller GraphQL servers connected to it. The best layman’s description is that we used a new technology to enable various teams at Indeed to put their data into a central place where all of Indeed’s software can get to it in one place. I also implemented a couple of those smaller servers. And in 2022, I joined the team that took over the iOS Job Search project. iOS has changed a lot since 2016-2017, and it has been a delight to hone my skills in Swift and SwiftUI.
Another really great thing about Indeed is that Engineering basically runs itself. Most of the time, the smallish teams decide what they are going to work on based on business goals, and decide when to work on it. Engineers have a level of autonomy unmatched by any other place I have worked.
I also really love what we do as a business. To this day, when we hire somebody, they get an Indeed tee-shirt that says, “I help people get jobs.” in Indeed blue. And everybody here takes that seriously. Management fully embraces that the job seeker comes first, and any change that hurts the job seeker experience is not made.
But the single biggest reason I stay is the people. People at Indeed are smart and friendly. Managers care about the employees more than just about any other place I have been. I feel like I can trust every single person I work with to do the right thing most of the time, and they trust me to do the same.
Indeed is not perfect. When I joined, we were a largish medium-sized company, with somewhere around a 1000 people. I was connected to every single person in the company through at most two, sometimes three other people. Engineering had a large role is defining the business goals. Most of the engineers fit into two medium-sized buildings in Austin.
We hit a huge growth spurt almost immediately after I joined. We grew so fast that we ran out of parking; Indeed subsidized Lyft rides for us, and required us to take Lyft one day/week. There were people, especially managers, that I had no idea who they were or what they did. We had to evolve our business strategy and management style to turn ourselves into a big company, which is fundamentally different. Individual employees have a lot less direct impact on the company, and that can be frustrating.
That being said, we were going like gangbusters until the pandemic hit.
On February 28th, 2020, the CEO sent out an email informing us that Indeed’s leadership team, in partnership with the Indeed data scientists and medical consultants, had determined that there was no way to safely work in an office environment, nor was it safe to travel. We were told we had to start working at home starting March 10, and we had the following week to get everything we needed to do that out of the office. March 12 is the day the NBA suspended its season, NCAA cancelled March Madness, and Major League Baseball cancelled the rest of Spring Training. Indeed had a two week head start.
While that was a pretty ringing endorsement of the leadership, the pandemic hit Indeed’s business very hard, like it did everybody else. We weathered that. In late 2021, with the economy recovering, Indeed started hiring very aggressively. I was doing as many interviews/week as I could do and stay sane, and the interview team would have been happy if I did more.
That all stopped in late 2022. And in March of 2023, Indeed, like many other tech companies, had layoffs.
It’s always hard for everybody when layoffs happen. Obviously, the people being laid off have it the worst. I know; I have been there. Some good friends were let go that day. Most them have moved on, and are back to something resembling normal, but I am sure that there are some who are still struggling.
But for those of us who are left, we all have some form of survivor’s guilt. There were quite a few reorganizations that made getting things done quite a bit more difficult.
But the biggest impact is trust. There is much more open hostility to the leadership team and to management in general. There is open anger and fear on internal chat groups. There is a lingering sense of doom that this could happen again.
I am reasonably confident that Indeed will get through this. My current job is great; my teammates are amazing. I am approaching 60 years old, and I don’t feel that my age is a hindrance at all; indeed, my decades-long variety of experience in software comes in handy quite often.
So, I hope to work at Indeed until I retire from software in a few years.
I help people get jobs.
Recruited by Tech 