Trusting My Voice
How I’ve grown my career at Thumbtack by fixing broken things
Move fast and break things. It’s a phrase you hear all the time in the tech world, almost an expectation — as if taking the time to do things right is somehow out of fashion or unnecessary.
I’ve never subscribed to this perspective. What if you don’t want to move fast? What if you see the value in moving methodically? What if instead of breaking things, you believe in taking what’s broken and building it back up in a sustainable way? The good news is you can challenge this common line of thinking and still kick ass in your career.
During my three years at Thumbtack, I’ve seen the company (and, specifically, the Brand Team) go through considerable change. But through it all, my philosophy has held steady — brand is integral to any organization. It comes through at every touchpoint, from email systems to integrated campaigns, adding value and moving the needle. It can be woven into a business’s short- and long-term strategies to make it stronger and, ultimately, have a meaningful impact on the bottom line.
I think I’ve carved out a unique position for myself at Thumbtack. I’ve always been the one to raise my hand and point out when things are broken — and I’ve never let my job title stand in the way. In fact, I think one of the main reasons I’ve accelerated my career from a junior designer on a three-month contract to a design manager in three years is that I’ve consistently refused to stay quiet when I see something that could be improved. Does that make me annoying? Maybe. Does it make me effective? Hell yeah.
So let’s talk about how I did this. Because although I’ve advanced my career at a faster-than-usual rate, I didn’t do it using any extraordinary means. I did it by focusing on fixing what’s broken, spotting opportunities and uncovering their potential, and being proactive about using brand in an effective way. I think anyone can do this.
Becoming a Thumbtacker
I joined Thumbtack shortly after graduating from the University of Cincinnati, where I majored in Graphic Communication Design. The Brand Team (then called the “Studio Team”) needed help with storyboarding and art directing their TV spots, something I was familiar with from my college internships. So I signed on for a three-month contract. While I was impressed with the company, I wasn’t necessarily trying to turn it into a full-time gig. I always figured that if it didn’t pan out, I could use the bridge of a contract to give myself runway to find a more permanent role somewhere else.
During my early days at Thumbtack, the Brand Team received and completed work on an ad-hoc basis, meaning we were more or less in service of other teams in the company. There wasn’t much room to develop our own creative perspective or start our own projects. But I could see things beginning to change. The creative leaders who hired me were developing more of a brand vision, and it was starting to take hold.
At the same time, I was beginning to realize how awesome my fellow Thumbtackers were. Being a part of the Brand Team meant working with some brilliant and collaborative colleagues. Two things I knew for sure: I wanted to help shape the brand vision that was emerging, and I wanted to keep working with this team of incredible people and see what we could do together. So a few weeks before my contract ended, I asked for an extension.
Using my voice to influence change
After securing a three-month contract extension, I continued to work on TV, but I also started looking for other gaps I could fill. The way I saw it, the more projects I made my mark on, the harder it would be to get rid of me. TV is such a specialized thing, and I knew it wasn’t going to affect the business on a day-to-day basis.
The marketing team was hard at work revamping their email program. They were working out a new cadence as well as an updated look and feel. This felt like a place where I could make a difference, so I formed a relationship with an amazing writer (and now long-time friend) and together we rolled up our sleeves and dug in.
We didn’t just work on redesigning one-off emails. We also collaborated to build a modular system steeped in logic — an antidote to creating every new email from scratch, which ate up a lot of time and effort. Looking back, this was my first chance to raise my hand and say, “I can be more than a purely visual designer. I’m thinking about how to make the work better and how to scale creative in a smart way.”
Around that same time, I saw another opportunity in helping out with art direction for large-scale campaigns, so I found a way to get into the work. Thumbtack was unique in having an in-house photo/video team, so I made relationships with those talented people and got to work. I started to help plan and art direct our shoots, which are some of my favorite Thumbtack memories to date.
By deliberately getting involved in several different projects — from the tactical (email systems) to more substantial efforts (video productions), I became a bridge. I was helping to create content, but I was also shaping how we used that content.
By the end of my six-month contract, I’d found a bunch of important ways to impact the Brand Team, despite my “junior” title. I did so by being proactive. If I had simply stuck to my original role — helping on TV — it would have been easy for my manager to send me on my way once my six months were up. But by actively finding a variety of areas where I could help influence both creative and the creative process, I was able to prove my value.
Moving into full-time
Once I secured a full-time role as a designer, I decided to double down on my strategic efforts. After proving to my team (and myself) that I had pretty good instincts about where processes could be improved, I felt more comfortable taking on that role on a larger scale.
I could already see inefficiencies with the way we were producing photo and video content. We were making awesome things for big brand moments, but weren’t considering how our content could scale to marketing channels like paid social.
It just wasn’t sustainable. I wanted to work more closely with our marketing partners, especially those focused on acquisition. It was finally time for us to understand their needs, rather than just the dreams of the brand creatives. Those conversations really shifted my way of thinking. Alongside some of the most talented and brand-forward marketers, we developed a plan to create scalable assets that could balance performance and brand quality. The result of this effort was a true collaboration between our brand and marketing teams — gone were the days when the Brand Team operated on an island, creating cool stuff that didn’t necessarily map to the company’s overall goals. Working closely with other stakeholders allowed us to rethink the role of brand as it had been operating.
My future at Thumbtack
Fast-forward to 2020, building that trust and agility has paid off. While we had to downsize our team in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we also had our workflow set up in a way that allowed us to face a restructure without missing a beat. This is a testament to the tenacity of the colleagues who are no longer on the team (I miss you all). Had we not already been building on an ethos of producing outstanding brand creative that was also in service of achieving business goals, it would have been a different story.
At Thumbtack, I’ve learned from the best. One leader, in particular, showed me that a good manager, over time, will make their team better than they are at doing the work. That’s been my goal for the last several months: Create a team that totally kicks my ass.
I’ve come a long way in the last three years. And again, I want to stress that this growth isn’t super unique or unachievable. I got here by saying “yes” to opportunities, learning what my colleagues had to offer and how I could collaborate with them, and by pointing out when processes or projects had holes that needed patching — even if I was the only one who could see it.
2020 has taught me that anything could change at a moment’s notice, and the one thing we should never expect is for things to stay the same. This makes me appreciate my hard-working and truly badass team even more. Seeing each member’s passion and thoughtfulness keeps me coming into work every day, ready to prove myself all over again.
As always, we’re hiring: https://www.thumbtack.com/careers/.
