Experience @ Sequoia
Hey!
I, Shashwat, am currently working as a Frontend Developer (SDE I) at Sequoia Consulting Group (SCG). I joined the company on 21st August 2019, so it has been roughly 10 months since I started showing my face at work. I’d like to share my experience so far at a company.
How did they hire me?
I was asked to interact with a good amount of people from the company throughout rounds before even getting an offer. It felt a lot back then, but in retrospect, it definitely was necessary. Each round is well curated to get the potential candidates accustomed with the people they might be working closely with. This gives a form of transparency at both, employer and employee, ends.
The hiring process was quite standard:
· First round involved Online coding : Questions revolved around JavaScript, ReactJS and Web Development fundamentals.
· Second round involved CS and logical programming : I was tested on my algorithmic approach to problem.
· Third and Fourth rounds : It involved me talking to a bunch of people from the company. We discussed about my past experiences in the field, hypothetical scenarios and my future plans.
Side Note — The hiring process gave me an idea about the kind of people I’d be working with. I learnt about the culture, people and work even before joining the company. I’d say that gave me a better understanding when I had to decide among the companies I got selected to.
First day @ Sequoia
I was given a week’s time before joining SCG at their Bangalore office. I was quite excited as I had no idea what to expect. The first day when I reached office, I was greeted by the entire team, shown to my desk, got my goodies and laptop. I started setting up my laptop and get on with other customaries.
I got along with my reporting manager later to discuss about my past work experiences and expectations from the future along with company’s vision in detail and what role will I be playing in that vision. Again, it was just the very start of my career and be valued like this definitely feels like I am truly able to contribute towards something big. That feeling is very enriching and empowering. When I got back from lunch, I learned about all the great benefits and programs that Sequoia offers to each one of their employees.
It was clear to me from the very first day itself that I’ll get a lot to opportunities to learn at SCG and hone my skills as a frontend developer. SCG provides an open environment for each employee to stretch their wings and try out new things.
Culture
One might hear frequently while being employed at SCG that it’s a “People First Company”, and they mean every word of it and in this particular case, all three words of it. You see, apart from the great culture that the management has been pushing, they care about the wellbeing of the employee and their whole round development.
Having your manager trust you with your capabilities is one thing, but ownership is better. I was given many opportunities like such to work on individual components, features, and modules alongside many of the senior developers at SCG.
We have had some great initiatives like, patent program and Khaltana cook-off to name a few. As well as we do go for regular hangouts with team mates.
A COMPANY IS AS GOOD AS ITS EMPLOYEES
Over the last 8 months, I walked into a room full of talented, hardworking individuals. Each one of them motivate me to strive more to improve my skills. It’s a sight to see them in action. With effective communication and dedication, we’ve done great things in just a short span of time.
It has made me realize that when brew the perfect recipe for the culture you want to see around, you can make things happen. Also, working closely with the team has made me realize that there is so much to learn and excel at. We’re 32 people strong at work and show no sign of slowing down in the foreseeable future. We are still hiring!
My work on Frontend Engineering
After joining Sequoia, I, along with four other cool frontend developers, were tasked to develop the frontend for the Sequoia HRX platform. Sequoia HRX is a People Insight platform that combines data-derived intelligence with Sequoia’s expert guidance. It was a big project which we accomplished with hundreds of thousands of lines of code and hours of brainstorming. The platform is being used by almost all the top companies in the US market.
With HRX platform in production, we still got requests for multiple features and projects coming in. So, these definitely are exciting times. Other than that, we do have intentions of open sourcing our design system with components, utilities and react hooks that we used at Sequoia called Eureka. We will share more details once it is ready to be Open Sourced. It’s our side project that we work on whenever anyone of our team members have any bandwidth.
Sequoia HRX was the major product that we worked on and I am pretty sure everyone learnt something as we made it to the finish line. I, personally, got accustomed to many new concepts like CSS-in-JS, React Hooks, deciding on UI/UX Designing, and various other core concepts of JavaScript. These things when coupled with best practices can equip any developer with a great set of knowledge on how things should be done.
RETURN TO WORK
Humanity faced a pandemic in 2020, and as many companies have started processing reality they now have to think about how they will adjust to new normal and how and when they bring their employees back to workplaces. This, particularly, is a complex and rapidly-evolving situation.
Sequoia has an offering to ensure a safe transition back to a productive workplace, namely Return to work. It has various features to emanate the confidence within the companies as they move forward and beyond the global pandemic. Some notable features would be the ability to create dynamic policies, set up testing and care, run your playbook and cohorts, educate and communicate and analyse and manage.
All of these are well curated steps that would ensure in the establishment of safer, and more productive environment.
CONCLUSION
Sequoia Consulting Group is, truly, a place like nowhere else. You’ll enjoy your work here with constant flow of challenges. You’ll get to surround yourself with motivated people who’ll help you strive for the better. We’re going through some challenging times in terms of product development life cycle, with critical features and more requests coming in, but it’s like the saying goes, “No Pressure, No Diamonds”.
Feel free to reach out to me (shashwat.bagaria@sequoia.com) incase you have any queries. Happy to help!
Check out our career page for open positions.
