He kicked a few tires to stay focused on the Front End!
Meet a Veevan is a series that looks at the employees who bring us life. For this edition we spoke to Matt Crowder, engineering manager and pioneer on the MyVeeva for Patients team. Matt found his calling early when he realized he could become completely absorbed in coding. But for him, it was web development that held his interest and the opportunity to build a new, consumer facing application at Veeva inspires him to do great work every day.
What is your personal and professional background and how did you get to Veeva?
Matt: I grew up in Northern Virginia and went to school in Utah. I am the youngest of four with older sisters and an older brother. My father was a wonderful influence. He worked really hard at his job, but always made time for being with us when it counted. Seeing him at sporting events left a huge impression on me and gave me the model for how I hoped to be as a dad when the time came.
Growing up, I loved to tinker and poke my head into devices to see how they worked — like getting new channels out of a TV! In high school, I was always good at math. But generally speaking, I had a hard time focusing and wrestled with a tough case of ADHD, which is still a big part of who I am and the choices I have made. I poured myself into a lot of activities — playing the trumpet, being part of the jazz band and wind ensemble, and playing football on the offensive line in high school.
My original path and interest was going to be electrical engineering and aerospace, but to get into this field I had to start with computer science. When I started to learn to code, I realized that I enjoyed it and I could lose myself in it — tuning out all the noise. I also had a gift for memorization. In the end, I pursued my college degree in computer science. My brother also followed this path and ended up in security, while I followed my interest in web development. I started working on my own projects on the side and developed a finance app just for my own use.
I landed my first job at a college career fair thanks to a big sales pitch and bigger dollars than I expected from a major retailer. I worked for them in Arkansas and later transferred to Virginia, but in the end, this wasn’t for me as there were not a lot of web development opportunities. I joined another firm that sold me on what I wanted to hear — an opportunity to work in React. But when I got there, it wasn’t at all what I was told, in fact, they were working in a proprietary language. To show good faith, I moved into their mobile team, but that group was over built. I was always highly motivated to find a job that would allow me to provide for myself, and in the long term, a family. I just needed to find the right match and a company that would back up what they pitched during the interview process.
In my next search, I was very specific — signing up for job alerts that would only match JavaScript and React. This turned up nearly 30 opportunities. I filtered them down to what I really wanted — dedicated front end work. In May 2020, I interviewed virtually for a position at Veeva and started in June 2020. What I was told was that I would just use React with brand new code, and a new project — and I could set it up as I saw fit. I would finally get a chance to be a front-end expert and have autonomy in the way things would be set up. I was the first hire for MyVeeva for Patients with a web team focused on the patient experience for clinical trials.
Today I live in Austin, Texas, with my wife and young daughter. Outside of my work and family activities, I enjoy powerlifting, playing video games and mountain biking.
What’s unique about the work environment and culture at Veeva?
Matt: Veeva has a very “come as you are” culture. There is tons of trust between the employees and managers. At our weekly one on ones, I can offer my opinions and relay my experiences openly and easily. Veeva has also done a great job of hiring nice people. I credit the interview process. It’s also so cool that we have a good balance of women and men on my team.
Internally, we set up a lot of processes to give the developers a better experience. We create new tools that help save everyone time. Without the type of autonomy we have, this would be impossible. This directly translates to employee fulfillment and success.
In terms of our externally facing work, as an engineering group, we are highly product focused with the ability to go to the product managers and vice versa to make everything better. Every day we put Veeva’s principles into practice — doing the right thing and autonomy over alignment. On our team, we really do our own thing, what’s best for the product, and we’re not bound into other bigger products. Of course, we have to code the right thing and reviews are highly collaborative. Doing things right and fast leads to customer success and a great user experience.
How will Veeva help you grow?
Matt: At Veeva, there’s no limit for growth. If there’s any opportunity to build something, you can build it. For the MyVeeva application, I am always thinking about how to improve the code base and no one is stopping us from doing so. Just one example of how we can use our autonomy is that I recently had a chance to pull some open source code to create a special feature that’ll help sponsors build surveys. It was outside day to day activities but it really made an impact.
I have a good manager who is looking out for me. As I grow in my role, I am looking forward to learning more about growing other people and helping them reach their potential.
I also enjoy writing technical material and have written some blogs to help my team and other engineers in my field.
What would you say to someone who was thinking of working here?
Matt: As an engineer at Veeva, I’ve been afforded a lot of trust to build a product the way I want to build it using fun technologies. I work with nice people and a great manager. At the same time, I am able to enjoy time with my family during these important years for my daughter. Veeva gives us great flexibility to have real work-life balance.
