There and Back Again — Buying a return ticket to Trainline
Introduction
People always say, “You can never go back” or that “You should never go back to a former employer”. It’s a rhetoric that’s been floating around the job market ever since I can remember, but why? Why is there so much stigma about going back somewhere you used to work?
In June 2019 I left Trainline after 3 years working as a Principal Software Engineer. I’d decided that I wanted to head back into the world of “big tech” by joining Microsoft. I’d worked in big tech before, prior to Trainline, and had decided that the time was right to give it another try.
Roll the clock forward 2.5 years to 2021/2 and the world, and the jobs market, are a very different place, so much so that I decided to leave Microsoft and return where I came from. But why did I decide to leave Microsoft and go back to Trainline? 🤔
Well, the answer is simple… just like the Tolkien story to which this blog takes inspiration in its name, I was going on an adventure.
Buying a Return Ticket
I’ve been lucky in my professional career to work with some great managers and teams, and the thing about great managers is you always seem to keep in touch with them.
When I realised my time at Microsoft was ending, I decided to reach out to my network and see what was happening in their companies and see what tech these people were engaging with. I don’t think I did this looking for a job, more to just figure out what I needed to revise for potential interviews. 😂
Trainline is a tech company. I cannot overstate this fact strongly enough. In 2016 when I first joined, Trainline was a company in transition from a train company doing things with tech. But Trainline is now firmly a tech company doing things with global travel. In the 2.5 years since my departure, Trainline has now evolved even further into a tech company driving an entire industry forward!
When I called up my old Trainline manager, he had recently taken on the mantle of Head of Engineering, a lofty title, but one I always knew he’d achieve one day, because without doubt he was a great and pragmatic engineer and a fantastic people manager. We spent a good 45 mins talking on the phone about what his plans were; plans for engineering in Trainline, plans for what he felt the challenges in the industry were, and just to chat general tech… and you know what? By the end of that call I was completely sold on his vision of the future.
What Made Trainline So Appealing To Me?
Shared vision
The phone call I mentioned above with my former manager truly inspired me. Let’s just take a moment here and ask ourselves “How often do we honestly get inspired these days?” It’s quite rare, but it can happen, and when it does it’s usually because you have a shared understanding, goal or for a more accurate term… it’s a shared vision.
Trainline is a company that really does want to revolutionise the way technology helps people travel. But more importantly they also want to empower their employees, engineers and their teams to be “best in class” at what they do, to use the latest technology and tooling to achieve what previously other people had thought was not possible and to do it in a way that promotes a greener planet.
In his book The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge describes a shared vision as “…a force in people’s hearts, a force of impressive power” and “…at its simplest level, a shared vision is the answer to the question, ‘What do we want to create?’” It is important to not underestimate that a unified goal or vision provides a foundation, a groundwork, a north star that can help steer an organisation forward.
In that 45-minute call I was instantly aligned to his vision:
Empower and invest in the engineers within the company
- Build a platform that can help the company scale
- Use the latest and greatest technology to solve the hardest problems
- Allow people to make greener travel choices
- Grow a culture with the organisation that people feel emotionally invested in, a culture people feel they can steer and influence, and most importantly a culture people are proud to be part of.
Team empowerment and autonomy
Here is a question for you dear reader: “Why do people get up and do the job they do? What gets people fired up and encourages them to produce their best work?”. I’m a firm believer that unless you know the answer to these questions, there’s no way you can hope to attract the best talent and retain it. For me, the answer to what gets me fired up is probably very different to you dear reader; for me there are only 3 key aspects of any role I take on, and those are:
- To grow others, to inspire them and help them to achieve their potential.
- To solve complex engineering problems.
- To feel that what I do has a direct and positive impact on the lives of people using my product/service.
Trainline is a company that really does want to revolutionise the way technology helps people with travel, but more than that, they also want to empower their employees, engineers and their teams to be “best in class” at what they do. Trainline wants teams to use the technology they need/want and to encourage engineers to gain a deeper understanding of modern cloud technologies and practices.
This shift, from internal abstraction to cloud native is important for two main reasons. Firstly, it shows not only a cultural shift, but a willingness to trust those people closer to the domain. Secondly it shows and builds an intrinsic and explicit trust model, it shows that leadership teams are actively engaged at helping remove friction/toil from engineering teams, they want teams to do what they feel is right, and they know that teams will be more productive as a result.
Trainline understands that the people on the frontlines need tools, autonomy and trust; because only when the teams win can the organisation win. 🏆
People Matter
In the book, Radical Candor, Kim Scott refers to there being 2 types of people within teams; Rock Stars and Super Stars.
people on her team who got exceptional results but who were on a more gradual growth trajectory “rock stars” because they were like the Rock of Gibraltar on her team. These people loved their work and were world-class at it, but they didn’t want her job or to be Steve Jobs. They were happy where they were. The people who were on a steeper growth trajectory — the ones who’d go crazy if they were still doing the same job in a year — she called “superstars.” They were the source of growth on any team. She was explicit about needing a balance of both.
While I’m not sure I fully agree with these terms/names (Rockstar seems to be a big stigmatised in engineering), I will agree that different people have different career goals/aspirations at different times. There are those people who will want a promotion and want to move upwards in the “career ladder”, but there are also those people who will want to enjoy the status quo or move sideways into completely different roles like leadership (as I did at Microsoft). But how can you support these very different career paths?
The answer is simple: You must be willing and ready to invest in the people you hire.
Across the world, the field of engineering is shifting. Back in the mid 90s it was the norm that you hired senior people to do work, you required degrees in computer science and when people left you hired a replacement. Fast-forward to current day, and now recognised the practice is to hire a balance of junior, mid and senior engineers, to grow the talent pool internally and retain staff. We remove barriers to entry and hire for a “company fit”, rather than a role. We care more about a person’s “Values” and less about their “Pedigree” and we nurture a person’s growth rather than enforce restrictive organisation structures upon them.
The simple fact of the matter is there are A LOT of amazing tech companies out there. If you want to attract the best and brightest to be part of your team, you need to make them feel welcome. You need to make them feel like they are the lifeblood of your business (because they are) and most importantly, you need them to feel like they have a long and prosperous future with your company, supporting their long-term ambitions.
Coming back to Trainline, one of the things I’ve been tasked with is to help grow our Principal Engineering org. but exactly how does one do this? Here are my simple thoughts:
- Nurture internal talent & give them something to aspire towards.
- Invest in growing people, by enabling them to find amazing managers and mentors.
- Raise the profile of your engineering org through social media to attract great talent into the company.
- Empower and encourage people to make the career shift from non engineering roles into engineering when the right time comes for them.
Growing A Great Culture
So I’ve already covered how much people matter, and how enabling people to do the right thing makes for productive teams. But how do you retain these great people after you’ve invested so much into time and energy into growing them?
The answer is your company’s Culture.
The culture of a company is what keeps your talent coming back day after day. Showing your employees that you want what they want, that you care about the same things they care about and how that shared belief can help you both achieve more… well it’s something that transcends free lunches and bonuses. It’s why people go join startups, because they see the opportunity to shape a culture from day 1.
It’s not just the values plastered on the walls, nor is it the office fruit bowls, bean bags or table-tennis tables
It’s how a company cultivates business growth by offering each employee a voice, while encouraging healthy day-to-day attitudes, behaviours and work ethics
Now I’ll admit there was a time in my career when I thought culture was overrated and not a priority for me; but I’ll be the first to admit that I was wrong in so many ways. I was career driven chasing promotion and personal glory… what a fool I was.
Roll the clock forward to my return to Trainline and this place lives and breathes culture. From internal code dojos, mentoring, hackathons, our annual Trainline Tech Summits and lunch & learn sessions we have created an inclusive culture that encourages people from all over the company to share their experiences and contribute towards each other’s learning and growth.
And we aren’t done yet!!! I honestly want to make Trainline a company people feel part of, like a family, not because they see it as a way to promotion, but because they want to shape, change and grow the company.
Results you can see
Many people often mention a common saying about being a small/big fish in a small/big pond. This analogy is usually used to imply that job satisfaction can often be found via the feeling of importance you get from your role, meaning a big fish in a small pond is quickly seen and recognised, given notoriety, whereas a small fish in a big pond is often missed/overlooked.
Instead of fish and ponds, let’s think of another analogy, one that fits our engineering mindset; in engineering/physics there is a simple construct of being a force multiplier or a force divider. A simple real world example is the humble fulcrum or seesaw. Depending on where you place that fulcrum, you can make the force you apply to a problem much more efficient; but put it in the wrong place and you’ll find you need to do a lot more effort to achieve the same result.
If you put the fulcrum in the right place you can make the force you apply to a problem much more efficient, but put it in the wrong place, you’ll find you need to do a lot more effort to achieve the same result.
As a Senior Principal Engineer at Trainline my job is to become that force multiplier for people. My role is to ensure that the energy people/teams can achieve the most impact possible, to help teams identify areas of pain, friction and concern that sometimes fly under the radar. I ask the questions people are sometimes afraid of such as “If you could change anything about engineering at Trainline what would it be?” and then channel their responses into tangible proposals to improve working practices.
In summary
As Software Engineers, we always want to know that the things we build are used and hopefully have a positive impact upon the world we live in. Now what “positive” means/looks like may vary from person to person, but, one common thing is true, we want to know that we can shape the path we take to get there.
I’m not saying Trainline is a perfect place to work, but what I am saying is that Trainline is a company that wants to get better. Trainline knows it’s not finished in its journey to be the best form of itself, it drives towards getting better every day, and it wants to bring everyone along on that journey. It offers a lot of great opportunities for people to have an impact on the world. Every day I stand on a train platform and see people using the Trainline app to search for a train ticket, or check their train departures, part of me thinks to myself… “I’m making that possible”. When I come to work and see an engineer frustrated with a process, they see no value in, I can sit down with them and help them find a better way.
I’ll forever be grateful for the opportunities that Microsoft offered me, the friends I made and the people I met; those experiences will last me a lifetime… and now I get to take those learnings onward, share them with the next generation of Trainliners, help them grow, see how they help me grow, and see them reach their potential… and that future looks EPIC!
