How You Can Grow Your Career at Loopio — Written By Someone Who Has Done It
For the last two years, working as a software engineer at Loopio has been so fulfilling — from working on complex technical solutions to leading team functions, the learning opportunities have been endless. It made me think that it might be helpful for anyone thinking about their own personal growth and career journeys, to share my own growth journey here at Loopio.
Getting to Loopio
In 2019, I was a Computer Science student at the University of Toronto and had zero work experience. The scope of my expertise in web development was only a single course I had taken during my time as a student, but it was something that interested me and I wanted to explore potential career options.
I came across Loopio at a career fair, where I spoke to a software engineer, a software engineer manager, and a talent recruitment representative. The Loopio booth was a popular spot, as both the engineer and the manager were surrounded by other students. So I chatted with the talent recruitment representative instead, and learned about Loopio’s company culture, employee engagement, and growth opportunities — I applied for a 16-month internship later that night.
I heard back from Loopio after about a week, and began the interview process that consisted of 3 stages:
- Phone screening
- Technical interview
- Behavioral interview
This was my first time going through a professional interview process, so even though the interview team made me comfortable at each point, I still inevitably had nerves throughout every step. The entire process took about a month, and after every step, I was told how soon I could expect a response — which was great for managing my expectations.
A few days after the technical interview, I remember driving to school with a friend and getting a call stating that I was successful in moving on to the next step. YES!! It was quite hard to contain my excitement during the call. After speaking to a few Loopers, they really solidified my desire to want to work at Loopio. The energy, passion, and dedication they showed in wanting to take Loopio to the next stage of its growth was infectious and I wanted to be a part of that.
The day finally came — it was time for the last step of the interview. A week later, my friends and I were at Senõr Burrito when I got another call. I was offered the position at Loopio. Alright — high-fives all around!! I was elated. I will forever remember this restaurant as the place where my career got a jumpstart.
The rest of my semester passed by in a flash and I was soon seated at Loopio’s office as an intern.
Starting as a Software Engineer
The first order of business was to go through Loopio’s developer onboarding. My manager at the time shared with me a huge checklist of what I had to do to get started in my first two weeks. It was a matter of learning the day-to-day operations of the team I worked on.
It was a lot to take in initially, but I had the full support of both my team and my manager. What was most astonishing to me was that one-on-one meetings with my manager actually occurred weekly, and that they were focused on how I wanted to grow at Loopio rather than how I’ve been doing at Loopio. Because I had 16 months at Loopio ahead of me, I had to think hard about what I wanted to do in these months to expand my knowledge and capabilities in this position.
Thinking about Growth
Growth was (and still is) a challenging thing to think about, and there were so many questions on my mind.
- Where do I see myself at the end of these 16 months?
- When do I know that I’ve grown in my position?
- Is there an upper limit for me to grow while at Loopio?
A lot of these questions would go through my head during my meetings with my manager. When the topic of growth came around again, I’d bring up these questions. I was surprised, the answers were simple and I realized that I had a lot of support from my manager. It felt like they actually wanted me to grow here.
Bolstered by this support, I first considered what I did at Loopio daily. I identified the skills that were involved and tried to think through how I might want to grow. This led to one question for my manager. I asked them:
What skills should I develop to better support the team?
I was surprised when my manager felt that this was the wrong question to ask. My manager wanted me to focus on:
The skills I wanted to grow rather than what was needed for the team.
This answer changed my perspective on how I should approach my career growth.
Actually Growing
I took time to think about focusing on which skills I wanted to develop, rather than what I should develop. This framework seemed uncommon in other Tech companies, and it made me realize that I had a special opportunity within Loopio.
At one of our next meetings, I came back to my manager with the skills I wanted to develop during my internship, and they were very supportive. They gave me resources I could read, courses I could use my professional growth stipend on, and constant feedback. This cycle would go on every few weeks.
Being the intern that I was, one who was constantly asking questions and curious about every aspect of the engineering department, there was always something new that I wanted to develop. It was a continuous cycle where I focused on specific sets of skills and got feedback on them before jumping to a different set. My manager would also look out for and open up opportunities within the team for me. By focusing on what I wanted to grow, I unintentionally also helped the team grow as well.
As I came to the last 3 months of my internship, the following question was posed to me
What do you want to do before you leave Loopio?
There were a lot of options that came with this question:
- I could have worked on a different team
- I could have worked on different projects at Loopio
- I could have stayed on the same team and furthered my skills there
After giving it some thought, I decided to stay on the same team for the last few months because I wanted to use the skills I had developed to help the entire team excel at what we do.
Return of the Jedi Intern
At the end of my internship, I went back to complete my last year of university and had to decide where I wanted to go next. I recalled the professional growth journey I had been on as a developer and decided there was only one answer. I had to return to Loopio. Considering how much I was able to grow within 16 months, how much more could I grow if I did not have to think about a looming end date?
I was excited. I returned to my same team, and got started on meetings with my manager, again with the same question:
How do you want to grow here at Loopio?
This time, I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and was able to communicate the impact I wanted to have at Loopio.
Full-Time Development (Get it?)
I have experienced tremendous growth here at Loopio since I first started. I have been promoted to a Level 3 developer, helped expand the engineering team, and transferred to a new team where we are tackling a very challenging project. I’ve had the opportunity to work with many new people across different functional areas and tried out a variety of responsibilities outside of typical development. My manager offered some suggestions and I ended up leading scrum rituals, like daily stand-up and Sprint retrospectives.
Overall, I am very happy with the outstanding support system we have here at Loopio — it has allowed me to be the developer I am today.
What about you? Are you interested in growing your own developer career? Here are five reasons why you should join Loopio’s Engineering team:
- The people you’ll work with are stellar people, both to chat with and learn from.
- Leadership truly cares about your professional development.
- It’s a fast-growing company with a lot of learning opportunities and cross-company collaboration.
- The technical problems we work on are challenging, and rewarding.
- We have a great company culture that embodies our values: Curiosity, Grit, Mastery, Support, and Candor.
Check out the multiple opportunities available across Loopio’s Engineering teams!
