Culture and Values at Sandbox
Culture is more important than ever in the modern workplace. People working at companies with strong cultures feel more included, happier, and engaged with their work. Many students at Northeastern look to co-op at companies with highly developed culture codes. At Sandbox, we are committed to our culture and believe it is well-adapted for a small, student-run software consulting firm.
In the next few sections, we’ll outline Sandbox’s core values, and describe how they directly affect the way we think about making decisions and solving our clients’ problems. Although companies have done tons of research into what keeps employees engaged with their work, not all of these ideas apply to a student organization doing pro-bono work. We’ve adapted some of the best ideas into a set of three values that provoke meaningful thought and guide action as our members go about their semester-long projects.
1. Make an Impact
Impact is one of our favorite words at Sandbox. It’s something that we believe sets us apart from working at a hackathon or solo programming for fun — when you join Sandbox, you work on a real project and produce real results which will help that client do whatever it is they need. Working on a project that positively impacts a person or organization means working on a project with purpose and meaning, which will engage an engineer throughout its duration. Sandbox engineers get to see this impact firsthand.
While many companies (the most famous of which being Amazon’s “Customer Obsession”) have a value similar to this, we’ve kept the wording of this value intentionally vague to leave room for interpretation from our members. While a business like Amazon serves their customers first, Sandbox is a student organization, which should provide as much value to its members as it does to its clients. We recognize that each Sandbox member can “Make an Impact” in their own way.
For example, one engineer teaching another how to use React will have a huge impact on that second engineer’s knowledge base and engineering skills. Our Head of Brand creating beautiful, eye-catching designs makes an incredible impact on our brand and image. And, of course, a team of Sandbox engineers building a robust and useful solution to a research problem will leave a massive impact on that researcher’s experiment (and hopefully publication) as they continue their work.
2. Learn Together
One of the primary purposes of Sandbox is to give Northeastern students a place to explore their passion for software development outside of the classroom. Although our co-op program does a great job of providing this type of real-world experience, it lacks in providing ways for students to connect with each other and build lasting relationships. Meeting other students is perhaps the greatest benefit of college; at Sandbox, we leverage this to enhance both the learning experience and the social experience for the better.
“Learn Together” is about the magic that occurs when a team full of bright, driven engineers meet to work towards a single goal. We find that regardless of skill level, every member on a team of engineers will learn when working together — software engineering is such a broad field that there is always much to learn. Sandbox is an environment where this type of collaborative learning is encouraged and flourishes. We quite often hear anecdotes from fourth-year members that they learned something from their first-year peers which they had not once stumbled upon. This is the magical value that collaborative learning provides.
3. Be Kind
Kindness is of the utmost importance at Sandbox. It seeps into all we do, whether it be conversations at social events or shout-outs at weekly meetings. Since Sandbox so highly values its social atmosphere, we have no tolerance for those who are not kind to others.
Kindness is not just a nice-to-have; it’s the first step in building an inclusive, supportive, and productive culture. An unkind code review can be disastrous; a kind code review can prompt an engineer to quickly respond to feedback and deliver the newly optimized code on-time (and enjoy doing it!). Being kind goes further than code review; words of kindness given while programming can give an engineer the confidence they need to pass an upcoming technical interview or to ace their next midterm. Kindness is an essential value which both enhances the experience of our members and drives the quality of our projects.
Evolving Our Values
Sandbox is constantly looking to improve and iterate on our culture, and while these values provide a base, they are a living document open to member feedback and improvement in the future. Like any modern startup, Sandbox’s culture is one of its biggest appeals. By living out our values, we empower our members, ensuring them the best possible experience — and in doing so, ensure our clients the best possible solutions. To find out more, check out Sandbox’s website, or follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn.
