5 Things I Learned While Working for Tumblr
This past summer I worked for Tumblr, which has over 450 million blogs but only 300 employees. It’s one of the most popular social networks, and consists predominantly of incredible creators from around the world.
I was one of the 17 interns at the company and the experience was extraordinary. With that in mind, the best advice from my 12 week internship is that everyone should work at a startup at least once in their lives. It’s really incredible, and here’s why…
1. You can talk to your CEO.
At most large companies, the CEO is someone you see give speeches on a web cast or interviews with reporters on TV. Rarely do you see them in person, and even if you wanted to chat with them, there’s no time in their schedule to do so.
That’s not how Tumblr, or any startup for that matter, operates.
David Karp, the CEO of Tumblr, was always accessible and genuinely cared about your opinion. There were multiple occasions where I’d run into him on the elevator or while eating lunch, and quickly strike up a conversation.
Most companies have a very strict communication hierarchy, but at a startup your voice matters and your opinions will be heard, sometimes even by the person who makes the most important decisions.
2. A startup office is the best place you’ll ever work.
The startup culture blends the boundaries of work and life when it comes to the office space, but it’s doing so in a way that makes employees want to voluntarily stay at work longer.
At Tumblr, we received catered meals every day, had a plethora selection of quick snacks, and dinner was paid for if an employee had to stay late.
The office is decorated with beautiful art, conference rooms were designed for comfort, and the open floor plan allowed for people to get work done, without being confined to the old-school cubical. It’s a refreshing change from typical corporate America, and once you work at an office like Tumblr’s, a typical corporate office becomes foreign and rudimentary.
3. Your co-workers become your best friends.
There are work friends and there are outside of work friends, but as a result of the incredible environment that a startup creates, combined with the like-minded driven people who work there, these two groups slowly merge into one.
From celebrating people’s 21st birthdays together, having company yacht outings, and all while sharing similar interests, these groups merge and the people who you work with five days a week, slowly become night and weekend friends as well.
At Tumblr it truly felt like a life long family, one unit, that were trying to make things better for everyone.
4. You move fast and break things.
Naturally, being in a startup, you are exploring and competing in uncharted territories at the intersection of business, technology, and culture, which leads to things occasionally not going your way.
Especially as an engineer, sometimes certain pieces of code slip through the cracks of review and lead users to being slightly confused as to why they were auto-magically logged out.
Keep in mind that these minor stressful times come with an enormous reward; you and your team are pushing the boundaries of technology and building something new. Wether it be organizing company events, designing marketing material, or building a product for a startup, you are doing things that have never been done before.
5. You are directly responsible for millions of people.
The most fascinating piece of a startup is it’s scale, for example at Tumblr there are 450 million users, and just 300 incredible employees.
Depending on how you look at it, one person is responsible for 1.5 million people and if you put that into a different perspective, that is the population of the city Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, which is fairly incredible.
I’m not saying the math is accurate in terms of one’s direct responsibility, but startups usually keep things lean and concentrated, but have a large base of customers and users.
If you work at startup, you’ll find yourself managing, building, or designing things that millions of people interact with daily, as opposed to most companies where you just become another small cog in the machine.
If you’re interested in my experience at Tumblr or just want to chat about technology, feel free to reach out to me on my website liambolling.com or follow me @liambolling on Twitter or Instagram.
