San Francisco has been at the forefront of emerging technologies throughout its history.
In the 19th century, the Bay Area served as a hub for the telegraph and railroad industries. In the 1960s and 1970s, it was home to companies and creators on the cutting edge of the invention and evolution of computers. In the 1980s and 1990s, the city became a magnet for internet companies.
And today, it remains perhaps the most prominent tech scene in the world.
Yet, for all of the creative breakthroughs and significant inventions, tech professionals are acutely aware of the minor frustrations and major setbacks that accompany their work. This year, nearly 170,000 employees in the sector have been laid off, according to Layoffs.fyi data. Many of these job cuts have impacted San Francisco-based workers.
As many local companies are shrinking their workforces, companies like Retool and CrowdStrike are growing their teams. As these organizations forge ahead to extend the streak of ingenuity in the city, they are searching for talented professionals who are driven to make an impact.
CrowdStrike is a global cybersecurity company that offers organizations of all sizes cloud-delivered endpoint protection solutions.
Think back to first joining the team. What drew you to CrowdStrike? How have your expectations been met since coming aboard?
I was instantly drawn to CrowdStrike and intrigued by the idea of building the talent acquisition team from the ground up. The mission of CrowdStrike resonated with me. I loved the idea of “stopping breaches” and knowing that our technology would help protect our customers from the bad guys.
I think it’s safe to say that we’ve exceeded my expectations. CrowdStrike has become a global cybersecurity leader, and our platform has offered unparalleled protection against the most sophisticated cyberattacks. In addition, I’ve had the opportunity to grow the talent acquisition function from a team of one — just me — to 119 globally.
I loved the idea of ‘stopping breaches’ and knowing that our technology would help protect our customers from the bad guys.”
What’s been your biggest success story since joining the team?
My biggest success story is that I helped build and scale the organization in preparation for a successful IPO. When I joined CrowdStrike in 2014, we were only about 100 employees in a handful of countries. Today, we are just north of 7,200 employees with a presence in over 30 countries.
Your company is currently hiring for a handful of roles. How can new hires make an immediate impact at CrowdStrike?
New hires can come in and make an immediate impact by being curious and bringing a fresh perspective. We encourage everyone to come in with the mindset that they can share their knowledge and expertise while being willing to learn from others. We have a very collaborative environment and truly live the motto, “One team, one fight!”
Retool is a software development platform that allows engineers to build custom internal tools remarkably fast.
Think back to first joining the team. What drew you to Retool? How have your expectations been met since coming aboard?
When I joined, Retool was exclusively a front-end builder. However, it was clear to me that the company would represent a service suite of products that helps to accelerate software development across the stack. That’s certainly played out with recent ships like Mobile, Workflows, Retool Database and Embed — and the opportunity for Retool to become ubiquitous is even clearer today.
In terms of the people, it was evident from some of my earliest conversations that Retools were humble, hungry and motivated to ship quickly and drive impact. They stood out as domain experts with both IQ and EQ and worked from first principles by talking with customers often. A collaborative and supportive culture balanced with a desire to win is particularly rare, but seeing how much of that we manifest here has been amazing.
A collaborative and supportive culture balanced with a desire to win is particularly rare, but seeing how much of that we manifest here has been amazing.”
What’s been your biggest success story since joining the team?
In the time that I’ve been here, the company has quadrupled, and we’ve quintupled the engineering team, but it’s far from hyper-growth at all costs. I’m incredibly proud of how we’ve been able to scale the team while maintaining our culture, operating principles and improving our overall execution. Retool is still at this really special stage of having more opportunities to tackle than people on the team. This means small teams are empowered to move incredibly fast and make an outsized impact, and we’ve strategically baked this into our culture and how we’ll continue to operate.
Your company is currently hiring for a handful of roles. How can new hires make an immediate impact at Retool?
Two of our operating principles are “act like an owner” and “move uncomfortably fast.” All Retools — new and tenured — are encouraged to edit the company and ship the most important things for our customers. Small teams across engineering, product and design (EPD) have incredible influence over our roadmap and how we apply our strategy tactically to our six-week planning cycles.
After onboarding, new hires on EPD are asked to write product friction logs to help identify problems our customers might experience, but existing Retools may be too close to the product to see. This helps them form a first-principles opinion on what our products and platform should be — where the leverage is, where we have the most opportunity for improvement, and how we can completely reinvent parts of software engineering with Retool.
