Inside the world of engineering at Dropbox with Aisha and Angella

We’re proud to say that we believe we have some of the best minds in engineering on our teams at Dropbox. And among them are scores of female leaders, who are helping us take our business, our products, and our culture to the highest possible level. In honor of Women’s History Month, we chatted with Senior Software Engineering Manager Aisha Ferrazares and Staff Engineer Angella Derrington to learn more about how they’re helping our teams (and themselves) succeed.

For you, what are the biggest benefits of Virtual First?

• Aisha: The benefit I’ve been most impressed with lately is that, when the pandemic started, Dropbox introduced monthly company-wide PTO days. This has been a huge help because when everyone else is taking time off at the same time you are, there’s a lot less to catch up on when you come back.
• Angella: Agreed — Dropbox has made a lot of thoughtful choices since the pandemic started, conpany PTO days being one of them. It was something my husband even shared with his company because it was so meaningful to us as a family. The other thing is that Dropbox helped us get additional financial support. A lot of families needed to hire in-home help during the pandemic, and Dropbox rose to the occasion and found ways to get financial assistance to those families.

As senior technologists, you have a lot of choices for where you want to spend your career. What made you decide to pick Dropbox?

• Aisha: I chose Dropbox because of the people. Everyone I met was really friendly and supportive, and the culture was extremely collaborative, which was really welcoming to me and has kept me here for six years. I’ve also stayed because of the opportunities around career growth and challenging myself. I don’t feel like I’ve stopped learning the whole time I’ve been here, and that’s really important to me.
• Angella: I also chose Dropbox for the people. The office culture and interview experience was so warm and friendly; I left the interview day feeling energized, not exhausted, which was so different from some of the other interview days I had experienced. That collaboration and that spririt has lived on, even through us going Virtual First. We’ve continued to have a connected culture with methods like team-building through online games, and a lot more thoughtfulness in our meeting culture to take time at the beginning to check in on each other and what’s going on in our lives.

How does DEI show up in your leadership goals and day-to-day work?

• Angella: The thing that has always impressed me is the thoughtfulness around inclusion. Folks work really hard to make sure all voices are heard in meetings, and if someone senses that a voice isn’t heard, they’ll take the opportunity to say “hey, do you want me to help amplify your voice? Not to take over what you’re saying, but just make sure you are really getting heard.” The other thing I’ve noticed is that Dropbox is always learning and challenging itself to do more. Since I joined almost five years ago to now, the amount of effort we put into trying new things, new training, and new approaches at the team level, to just really ensure all those voices are being heard, has been really wonderful to be part of.
• Aisha: Dropbox has done a really good job with learning experiences around DEI. I feel like I have a lot of opportunities every week to attend talks or workshops that help me educate myself even more about these topics. It’s really impactful for me to feel like I’m able to get better at being an inclusive leader and being an ally in general in the world.Aanother thing that was really imortant to me was that the team, when I joined, had a woman engineering manager and a woman tech lead. That was really impactful for me; I felt like I had the role models I needed to see myself in those roles, and part of my ability to get where I am now was having those role models early on that I could emulate.

What do you like about your job here? What keeps you here and keeps you actively engaged?

• Angella: The thing that keeps me at Dropbox is the ability to learn new things in a really supportive environment. The ability to get out of mobile and have the opportunity to learn how our big data works has been really meaningful to me and I’m not sure I’d have the opportunity at another company to do that work. I also really appreciate being able to talk and have access to senior tech leaders across the gamut at a personal level to learn about their work and understand it better.
• Aisha: The biggest thing that has kept me at Dropbox is continuing to feel challenged. There’s a lot of opportunity to grow and try new things and jump into new roles. I had people who believed in me and were willing to help me find or make those opportunities so I could continue to challenge myself. It’s important to me to stay somewhere as long as I’m still learning, and I haven’t hit that point in six years.

Interested in hearing more from our women in engineering? Check out our blog with Nicole, Rachel, and Susanne here.