Why I Joined Thumbtack as a Site Reliability Engineer
Why Thumbtack Is for Me and Could Be for You
When choosing their next gig, every engineer prioritizes factors they are most motivated and incentivized by. For me, there were three big ones — Mission, Culture, and Work.
The Mission
What’s different about Thumbtack compared to my previous experiences is that I know the tangible value and impact my work has at this company. With a mission that directly supports communities, Thumbtack allows engineers to feel empowered by helping pros and customers. I’m proud to make a difference at work every day.
Personally, interacting with pros as a customer always inspires me. Their stories of resilience and passion give me a renewed purpose and offer uncharted perspectives. Knowing my work is impactful is important to me. At Thumbtack, I am able to be equitable, mission-driven and put my heart into what I do. Tangible change is invaluable and impacting communities is powerful.
The Culture
I’ll be honest, I was quite skeptical and nervous about a fully remote workplace. A home office? How would I get to know my colleagues? Would I be able to show up as myself?
I could not be more thankful for the flexible, human-centric culture Thumbtack fosters virtually. Because of Thumbtack’s virtual-first working model, my life has finally not been dominated by the demands of my work. I have the freedom to have lunch with my wife, as well as prioritize rest and my mental health before and after the workday.
Thumbtack’s quarterly in-person events have facilitated the best conversations, helped me truly strengthen relationships with my colleagues, and created informal, fun spaces for everyone to really get to know one another. I love the virtual happy hours my team hosts, and the many Slack channels that allow me to be my quirky and authentic self. My colleagues work across multiple time zones and we don’t share cubicle walls in a physical space, but I certainly feel connected with them as we collaborate, laugh, and ideate together.
The Work
I have had the privilege and experience of working in various industries across both large firms spanning thousands of engineers and smaller organizations with only a handful of engineers. In my previous roles, my work did not always feel like it had an intentional impact. Sometimes, I was drowning in constant firefighting. Other times, I felt like a small cog in a big machine. Those experiences gave me the drive to find balance in my work. I was determined to find a company with a relatively stable infrastructure and a lot of interesting challenges waiting to be solved.
When I was interviewing with Thumbtack, I took every opportunity I had to ask questions. I wanted to know more about the team, the work and engineering’s impact on the organization. My interviewers, who I continue to work with today, enthusiastically explained the team’s projects that they were proud of. They talked about leveraging Kafka for Change Data Capture and all things containers and AWS. Everything was music to my ears. I was eager and inspired to be a part of a team that made a significant difference in the work of engineers across the organization.
As I reflect on my year and a half at Thumbtack, everything that I’ve had the opportunity to learn and accomplish confirms that I made the right decision to work here. From exploring how infrastructure is set up for a stable web marketplace, implementing large cross-functional projects, to constantly securing our infrastructure — I’ve solved interesting challenges and grown as a skilled engineer.
The best part? There is no shortage of exciting projects to tackle. Implementing long-term metric storage, improving existing container infrastructure, building the next-generation developer platform — to name just a few. If all this sounds like music to YOUR ears, you might want to consider joining my SRE team!
Interested in exploring all of Thumbtack’s engineering roles? You can view our current openings here.
