Why I Joined Patreon

Today is my first day at Patreon. When I told friends and family that I was joining Patreon, I got one of two responses. Either a friend would say something like: “Dude! That’s amazing! Patreon is great.” Or they would say “Why Patreon over other-San-Francisco-based-tech-company?” This post is an attempt to answer the second group. I think Patreon is one of the most interesting and exciting places to work right now, and I hope that by the end of this you’ll agree.

The Interview

To start, I want to talk a little about my interview process at Patreon. If you decide to join us (and I hope you do), your interview process may be different, because we’re always trying to improve how we hire. My interview process had three stages: initial recruiter call, phone screen, and on-site interview. If you’re familiar with hiring in Silicon Valley, these stages won’t shock you, so I’m not going to go into a ton of detail about each stage. Instead, I’ll focus on what stuck out, and what heavily influenced my decision to join.

What struck me first was that Patreon tests for skills I would actually be using as a part of the team, especially skills that they couldn’t glean from looking at my resume or Github. The technical portions of my interviews included zero whiteboard coding, and no algorithmic “gotcha” problems. Instead, they focused on designing real systems, and talking through the technical challenges and pros and cons of designs. These were basically extended conversations over a whiteboard, the kind that seem to happen weekly in most of the organizations I’ve been in.

This was the pattern of my interview process here: engaging, frank conversations about what the challenges are at Patreon, what the future could hold, and where Patreon, both in product and organization, could be improving. These conversations happened with people inside and outside of engineering, and sent a strong signal that Patreon is looking for people who aren’t just experts in their fields, but are also able to communicate how their work contributes to Patreon as a whole.

That idea of contributing to Patreon as a whole was another factor in my decision. Patreon is growing rapidly, but is still a pretty small organization for the amount they get done. As someone who is interested in helping shape the future of an organization, it feels like an incredibly exciting time to be joining.

The Product

Everyone I met during the process made me excited about Patreon the organization, but Patreon the product is already fundamentally changing the internet. Take a look at the old funding models for producing things on the internet. For years, the only ways to make a living were to sell products, put all your creative works behind a paywall, or put ads all over your creativity. Patreon is providing tools for creators that I think will starting visibly eating into the internet ad space in the next 5 years. That mission is a mission on par with what Mozilla, Wikimedia, or the Internet Archive are trying to accomplish: Patreon is helping creators make a living on the Internet, and making the whole Internet better as a result.

The Challenges

All of this isn’t to say that Patreon doesn’t have challenges. As a company, Patreon needs to scale up to handle the ever-increasing set of creators and patrons joining the platform. As an engineering organization, the decisions made today will impact Patreon’s ability to scale over the next five years and beyond. Additionally, Patreon has multiple competitors who have seen what Patreon sees, that the time is finally right to build a funding model for creators on the internet. On top of all these challenges, Patreon’s commitment to its creators and patrons means Patreon is going to keep pushing forward on functionality that makes it easier for creators to make a living and easier for patrons to support the creators they care about.

These challenges are huge, but also hugely exciting, because they are meaningful. Meeting and surpassing these challenges will mean helping creators, some of whom are close friends or people I admire greatly, be successful in doing what they want to be doing.

My hope is that by this point you understand a bit of why I’m joining Patreon, and that I’ve piqued your interest in joining us. There’s a couple more things that were meaningful for me that I’ll list here, because perhaps they’re meaningful for you as well.

• Patreon is a Python shop in the backend. It’s not for nothing that Python is such a popular language, and my personal favorite. I move faster in Python, and I find it easier to collaborate in Python than any other language I’ve tried.
• Patreon’s current team provides ample mentorship opportunities, and chances to grow in professional skills as well as technical skills.
• Patreon is serious in their commitment to scaling the team correctly, across the board. That means finding people who aren’t just excellent, but who have perspectives and backgrounds not already represented at Patreon.

In case you couldn’t tell, I’m pretty excited to be joining the team at Patreon. If you’ve read this far and want to join us, check out our jobs page. I hope to see you in the office someday soon!