A Honey Badger Gives the 411 on Working for Pipefy
I was asked to share the inside scoop on my history at Pipefy since I’m one of Pipefy longest-standing employees (I’ll be completing three years this February). I want to speak on how my career has evolved and the opportunities for personal growth I had as a Pipefy employee. Let me tell you… A LOT happened. Almost everything has changed since I first started here, not only my career but the entire company as well. I am employee number 27 at Pipefy and now there’s more than 200 people here and we’re still hiring! It’s crazy to think that I contributed to this amazing company and helped the product to be where it is today!
But let me start by introducing myself. I’m Claudio Furini, 23 years old, and a front-end developer at Pipefy. Born and raised in a farm in the countryside of Paraná, my family moved to Curitiba in 2008 so I could go to college. I graduated in International Business in 2016 and absolutely hated working in this field.
I had just finished college, was unemployed and with no clue of what I wanted to do with my life (yes, just like most 20-year olds). Since I knew how to use a computer, I thought I might work in that area… maybe create websites or something. I finished three online courses, though it was good enough and started looking for a job. There was a job opening atPipefy that was conveniently located four blocks from my house! I applied for the job, and received an interview invitation for the next day.One week later I had the job!
I had no idea what to do, what Pipefy was and what was I doing. But that was, and still is, the greatest thing about Pipefy. Since day one, I was never reprehended or judged for not knowing something. I quickly learned that if you put effort and show interest, people will gladly teach you what they know.
I started as technical support for Pipefy customers. I had never worked in technical support and there were no other technical support professionals in the company, so I had to figure it out. When you are given a challenge like this, it’s hard for you to know if you are doing a good job because you don’t have metrics of what’s expected of you. And if you don’t know that you are doing a good job, you might lose passion in what you do. But that was never the case here at Pipefy.
I constantly received feedback from my colleagues, leaders and customers. It was so different from the previous companies I had worked. I’m not trying to paint a picture here that Pipefy is the perfect place to work, where everyone have an easy job, smiles all the time and everything always works out in the end with flowers and rainbows. But, to be honest, I wouldn’t want to work for a place like this. There are hard days, I was and still am faced with multiple challenges, deadlines, stakeholders and metrics to achieve, but I always want to go back to work.
The motivation you get when you work on something that you care about is honestly the best thing you can have in your career. I’ve seen this company evolve so many times, change metrics, market position, brand, restructure the teams, make a roadmap for the next few months and then change again. But for me, that is what a startup is. You have to adapt to achieve your goals. And this mindset definitely rubs off on you.
I spent two years inside technical support. People started joining my team as Pipefy continued to grow every day. But whenever you think you figure it out and have a grip on your work… here comes a new challenge.
As tech support, I had daily interaction with the development team. Back then, there were around 10 developers. They were a great group who worked very hard, and I had great admiration for them. I began to imagine how cool it would be if I could be one of them, and become a developer. I started studying development on my own with a bunch of online courses. Every opportunity I had, I would ask questions for the developers. One thing you might not know about developers is that although they can be shy, most of them are very patient with any questions and will help you.
The day I told my leader that I would like to change departments and become a full time developer, he didn’t even question my decision. He was just happy with my interest and gave me some advice on how I could reach that goal. Then it was just a matter of hiring more people so I could pass on my duties in tech support. Shout out to Marcio Trindade and Rodrigo Morais for the help in the process.
Finally, I became a junior developer at Pipefy. I was working side-by-side with the people I admire most. Since then, it has been a great and fun experience. I’ve learned things that I used to think only geniuses could pull off. And here I am today doing those things (shout out to JavaScript and React). Yes, I learned a lot with courses and studying, but I couldn’t be where I am today without the help from all the devs that sat with me and taught me so much.
Working as a developer in a startup can be very overwhelming at times. There is so much going on: new features, old and new bugs, legacy code, new technology and programming languages that you have to learn. You work with professionals that know so much more than you, and it feels like you will never be on their level. But the day you solve a problem that you didn’t think you could, or when you teach something new to that colleague, it’s a great day. And you just want more!
That’s my experience so far here at Pipefy. I’m not the same person that first joined the company, as Pipefy is not the same company it was when I first started. But we both still share the same goals and principles. Thank you to all of the Pipefy members that helped me along the way and to Marcio Trindade, Raphael Costa, and Flavio Muniz for that weird five-minute interview that changed everything for me. Hope there is a lot more to come.
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