My first 100 days at Skyscanner

Hi there 👋, I am Glory Tan.

In this post, I’m going to share my experience of my first 100 days at Skyscanner. From this, I hope this gives you a glimpse of the culture at Skyscanner and in the Engineering team.

About me

I joined as a Senior Security Engineer in the Information Security squad. Before this I’ve worked in the UK and Singapore. Most recently, I worked at Deliveroo and the Department and Work for Pensions. My area of expertise is within information security and enterprise risk management. I enjoy simplifying complex technical problems for teams so they can find practical solutions.

The first 100 days

In all honesty, I knew very little about Skyscanner before I joined. I’ve not even used it before. My first impressions were based on people I knew who used to work there. I browsed Medium blog posts, saw who’s in the company on LinkedIn and checked out Glassdoor. My expectations were positive, but I was still a bit skeptical.

Time has gone flown by since I started and I’m glad I made the decision to join the team. Here’s a couple of things I’ve been up to:

• Led two security awareness sessions live (Lunch and Learn for the company and a Tribe specific session)
• Attended three internal Learning & Leadership workshops (Being anti-racist at Skyscanner, Stakeholder Management, Presenting and Speaking with Confidence)
• Met over 100 people in the company (mostly remotely)
• Led multiple third-party security assessments
• Provided recommendations in early stage design and project conversations to establish security requirements with cross-functional teams
• Joined an external Accessibility conference that I learned about from our Accessibility Guild
• Snagged some sweet swag in the form of Pride masks and Skyscanner stickers
• Joined Slack channels with like-minded colleagues (accessibility, pride, diversity, equity, inclusion)

The good:

• My hiring process was amazingly stress free and efficient. As I require a visa to work in the UK, switching jobs involves more hoops but our Talent team know what they are doing. A (typically) anxiety inducing process was very well taken care of
• Trust, an enabler for success. Two days into the job, someone pinged me on Slack and asked for my advice on a security question. Every strand of imposter syndrome in me thought, “you’re asking me? The two-day old newbie?” I was able to provide a recommendation with my own expertise, while backing up my unfamiliarity around company context with my team’s support. A great confidence boost
• Asking for help is a slack message or email away

The challenging:

• Time zones and geographically scattered colleagues are the reality of a global company. Arranging meetings and getting to know people virtually made me wonder if I was bothering others
• Being a new joiner in a remote and hybrid working can be exhausting. As an introvert I do enjoy my space at home, but “Zoom fatigue” is real

Two takeaways worth calling out

1. The role was exactly what I was expecting and aligned to the job description

One of the expectations of my role was to drive security awareness initiatives in the company. I challenged myself and organised a Lunch and Learn session for security awareness month (observed globally in October). After all, the best way to learn is putting yourself out there in an environment that was supportive and safe. My manager gave me the right amount of autonomy and support to get it done. Was I nervous about leading a Lunch and Learn session for the company? Yes. Can I improve on my delivery? Definitely. It was worth it though.

One of our company values is: “we act like owners” and I had the chance to demonstrate this. That said, your role will differ according to what you’re hired for. Yet I am positive that you can expect the opportunity to do so like I have.

2. There’s so much more to learn about our company and what other teams do, but there is plenty of support

Another one of our values is “we are endlessly curious”. Being that way will give you a good trajectory for success here. There is a strong drive for personal and career growth. When onboarding, our ‘Engineering Bootcamp’ is available for everyone. This provides information about our core services and engineering principles, which is useful for both technical and non-technical colleagues.

Our Learning and Leadership team goes above and beyond to drive career development opportunities. In case you are wondering, yes, there are opportunities to learn a language if you wish to do so.

Finally, one of my highlights is being able to learn from other colleagues in more informal ways, such as slack channels for a wide range of interests (of course there must be a channel on #stonks, #sourdough-bakers and #gaming right?). We have groups for parents, sports, wellbeing, and foodies too.

And no, I didn’t get any extra credits for writing this. I wanted to share this because I think representation matters and I would like my story to inspire other women considering a career in this field or with Skyscanner.

If you are considering a role with us, I hope my experience so far might encourage you to apply!

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