Software Engineer Rina Artstain shares the reasons why she thinks Dropbox Tel Aviv is so special — including the breakfasts
Our office in Tel Aviv is made up of many different demographics: Israeli, American, Arab, Jewish, parents, recent graduates, and so many more. But there are a few things that always bring people together, like breakfast, ping pong, and a love of engineering. Software Engineer Rina Artstain gave us a peek into exactly what drives the Tel Aviv office, and why they are such a close-knit group.
Can you tell us a little about your education and journey to Dropbox?
I have a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Hebrew University, and a Masters MBA also from there. I was actually part of a special program where we did it together in four years, which was cool. It was very impressive to employers when I first started out! After that I worked at Intel, and then another small company where I basically led the development. That company was sold to an enormous corporation in Europe. I started looking for something new and started at Dropbox almost 2 years ago.
What’s your favorite thing about being a software engineer? What are the challenges?
The challenges are the scale of the number of groups you have to work with, and the amount of code and legacy code you have to dig through. It’s never easy coming into a new code base, and Dropbox has a lot of code and many groups. Being from Tel Aviv, we have to work even harder at communicating and building working relationships with groups in other sites, so that’s a real challenge. But once we create those relationships it’s really just an amazing experience. It feels great to be able to talk to people you’ve never met, but still have a good relationship with, and joke and work well together.
In your opinion, what makes Dropbox Tel Aviv unique?
Dropbox as a company is unique in that everybody’s nice, there’s really a lot of niceness. And in Tel Aviv we have the Israeli edge — we’re nice, but we’re more direct. You can really get quality constructive feedback, but nobody’s mean to each other, which is very refreshing. Also, as a group, there’s less group think. People will say their opinions, and there’s no being too polite to disagree with somebody else. We actually get better results that way. We try to take our discussions into rooms, since people in the open spaces don’t like it too much when we get too loud, but sometimes we can’t help it.
How would you say Dropbox Tel Aviv creates community?
We do have events like happy hour and end of year parties and holiday parties, but in the end it’s a very small site, we only have about 60 employees. So real community comes from just working together. The Tuck Shop is small, so we all have lunch together or run into each other having coffee, and those are the real moments when community happens. Everyone feels comfortable talking to each other and asking for help and just hanging out. And of course, there’s the ping pong table! I usually leave before they start playing because they start later in the afternoon and I have to go get my kids, but when I am in the office I can see that people come to play ping pong from all different groups.
What is your favorite part of the office?
There are two. Our team sits in one of the corners of the office, and there’s a sofa there and we call it our living room. Some of us work from that couch, we actually have a calendar and everybody has their own day for it. And there are rules — if you leave your laptop on the couch then people can’t take it, it’s your couch for the day. And when people come to talk to us, they say, “can we join you in your living room?” So that’s my favorite working space. It works for me because I get to hear what’s going on in the open space but I don’t have the visual interruption.
My other favorite place is the Tuck Shop. We’re on the 44th floor and have a view of the Mediterranean Sea, and next to the window there are a few seats where you can have breakfast. I always have breakfast there in my own seat that I always sit at. I eat at 8:30 — the second they open breakfast I’m there in my seat! The food in San Francisco is considered the best, but our breakfast is better — it’s an Israeli style breakfast, so we have salads and cheeses and breads and fresh coffee and orange juice. It’s light and healthy and varied.
How are you making the most of working from home?
It’s not easy balancing working from home for so long, but I try to do my best to separate my work time from my home time. I work for a few hours in the morning, then take a long lunch and time with the kids break and then work again for a few hours later in the afternoon. I have to be more purposeful about work meetings and social interactions to make sure they happen, but that they don’t take up too much of my limited time. I have had some amusing incidents with children coming in the middle of a conference call, but everyone understands and we all laugh together.
Want to learn more about our Tel Aviv location, and our other offices around the world? Check out our jobs page.
