Engineers: how to choose your next role (& how I chose Spendesk)

I’m a Senior Engineering Manager at Spendesk — and happy to be here. But as I’ll explain, choosing the right company to join and grow with is difficult.

We’re lucky to have more and more opportunities as developers. And in March 2020, I had to face a situation I wasn’t used to.

It was time for me to work for a new company, and I started taking interviews. Meanwhile, France was going into lockdown, and we were all facing great uncertainty.

As far as I was concerned, I was counting down the days in lockdown, and using interviews to try to make the best of if.

Several of the interviews went well. And or the first time in my career, I ended up with many different offers.

I was faced with a new challenge: I had to choose.

Perhaps this extreme situation — safety concerns, economic uncertainty and freedom restrictions — actually forced me to do a deeper introspection than usual. How would I chose the company I wanted to work for, and what could I learn while interviewing to make the right choice?

Interviewing the interviewer

One fundamental aspect we tend to forget while interviewing — especially as young professionals — is that interviewing is about two things: the company finding the right candidate, but more importantly establishing a good match between company and candidate.

It’s important that company finds someone with the right skills and values. But it’s as important for the person to find a company that matches their expectations.

You’re probably used to that particular moment in an interview when the interviewer asks you if you have any questions. This is a critical moment.

It usually happens at the end of the interview, when you’re finally able to release a little pressure. It obviously lets the interviewer probe your interest in the company — which can be a decisive factor in some cases . But this is also the perfect moment for you to gather specific intel.

During the whole interview, you get a sense of how much you’d enjoy working for this company. Is your interviewer friendly? Is the technical test meaningful and challenging enough? Is their description of the product clear?

But you don’t have much control over what you really need to know to make your decision.

During the Q&A time, the balance is reversed and you should be prepared to use it efficiently to get the information that will help you make your choice.

What to probe for 📡

Making a choice —not to mention the right choice— is terribly difficult. Especially since only time can tell how right or wrong the decision was.

However you can still do your best to put the odds on your side.

With many different offers, it took an unusual amount of introspection to find the differentiating aspects that would help me reach a final decision. Here were the main factors:

• The benefits: 💰 This is actually one of the easiest to tackle. There is a high chance that the offers you are going to receive will be in a similar range. There will be small differences, but often not big enough to guide your decision. And even if there was an offer that was really above the others, there’s very little chance that you went this far in reading this article if money is your main decision-making factor. In my case, there were differences that were substantial, but I didn’t choose the highest bid.
• The business: Do you prefer working for the environment or the ad-tech industry? Do you prefer helping the financial world or a medical business? Even if you’re tech-oriented, the business you choose will have an impact on your job on a daily basis. Don’t hesitate to probe deeper into the “why” of each company, and the problem(s) they’re solving. This aspect can be decisive, as it brings meaning to what you do. Possible questions that will help get the right information can include:
  What are you solving for your customers that your competitors do not?
  To the interviewer specifically: What is your favourite feature of your product?
  Why should I / my company use your product?
• The technique: Wherever you are on your career path, you need to pick a place that will make sense regarding your professional project. You need to know if the skills you’ve been consolidating will bring technological value to the company, and if this company will give you ways to get better at what you do (or pick up new skills). Ask probing questions about technology used, the processes in place, and work organization. This aspect can be decisive as it determines your success in the company and what will remain of the experience at the end. Possible questions that will help get the right information can include:
  How are you making technical decisions that impact more than one team?
  What technologies do you use, and how did you pick those?
  Can you tell me about the most challenging project you had to manage in <company>?
• The people: You’ll meet people from different departments during the interview process. They’re the people you’ll spend most of your time with. More than with your friends or family. You need to ask yourself: do I see myself working with them? Do we share the same values? Will I enjoy working on issues and succeed with them?
  This aspect can be decisive as you’ll walk a path with people, and those people are going to set the pace and atmosphere of your journey. Possible questions that will help get the right information can include:
  When was the last time you disagreed with a teammate?
  With whom in your company would you start a business?
  Are the company values applied in day-to-day life? How are they applied? This will tell you how people live with the company values, and how your own life will be impacted by them.

So, how do you chose ?

All the offers I had were similar in many aspects, but one in particular made the difference. When asking myself what really mattered to me, I realized this: more than working ON a product, or USING a specific technology, I was going to work WITH people.

What was really going to impact my daily life as an Engineering Manager was the team I was going to join.

In that respect, Spendesk was the most convincing company. The other companies were great, but something in the people at Spendesk struck me: I had rarely seen in my career such a cocktail of technical expertise, passion for the business, and kindness.

Obviously, this is not something I probed with specific questions. It was more of a diffuse feeling that transpired during the whole recruitment process. I managed to strengthen this feeling by asking questions about culture and values. But in the end, it was more attitude than words.

I also was lucky enough to know some people at Spendesk from previous companies. It definitely helped as I trusted these people, and it was reassuring to know their choice was the same as mine.

After nearly a year in the company, I still stand by my choice and truly believe I joined one of the most amazing engineering teams in Paris!

By the way, we are recruiting. How about making a decisive career choice?