Barcelona retreat, flux.js, and cute dogs — my amazing first month as a productboard engineer

A year ago, I was contacted by Tereza, People Ops Lead at productboard. productboard was organizing a “Hacking React” event, she said. Would I be interested in joining? Her invitation piqued my interest, and I became curious about the company, product, and team.

A smooth interview process — developers discussing developer things

Soon, I was ready for a new engineering adventure in Prague and re-opened my conversation with Tereza. Two days later, I was discussing tech and engineering with Daniel, co-founder & CTO of productboard, and the rest of productboard’s dev team.

productboard co-founder & CEO Hubert Palan makes it a point to speak with every final-stage candidate that comes through the door, and I was excited to meet him and learn more about the inspiration behind productboard. During our call, Hubert’s clear passion for his company’s mission and vision rubbed off on me, and I became even more excited to come on board.

Obviously, this story has a happy ending. I received an offer soon after my call with Hubert. ??The entire process took less than a week and did not feel like your average nerve-wracking interview — it was simply developers discussing developer things, just how it should be.

Though my official start date came later, I joined productboard at their annual offsite retreat in Barcelona and got to meet both the Prague and San Francisco teams. How’s that for company culture?

Next thing you know, I’m one month into my journey as a productboard product developer… 

Onboarding the productboard rocket

My first day could not have been better — in fact, I immediately received the opportunity to contribute to README improvements. Because I requested access to productboard’s codebase prior to starting and was already aware of our usage of TypeScript, React, and our custom flux implementation, I was able to hit the ground running right away.

I experienced many “wow” moments during my first few days on the team. The quality of productboard’s codebase is incredible for its young age, and it has maintained its integrity during the company’s hyper-growth over the past few years. It is highly functional and a breeze to work with. I was impressed by the cleanliness of design patterns used, especially compared to the many apps I’ve seen where teams have clearly cycled through design patterns without sticking to one. No “JS fatigue” to be seen here.

For someone that loves React programming and functional programming, this is heaven.

Engineering culture is the G.O.A.T (greatest of all time) ?

productboard’s engineering culture provides employees with the foundation and resources to do their best work.

Want to improve your skills with Egghead, Frontend Masters, or Kent C. Dodds’ Testing JavaScript? Request it.

Have an idea for architecture improvements? Pitch it.

Think React hooks might be better than HOCs for component composition? Write a PoC.

Have any initiative or engineering event you’d like to organize? Just DO IT.

There is too much to be said about my first month at productboard, so I’ll just leave you with five random moments:

• Prior to starting: Relaxed under the Barcelona sun with both Prague and San Francisco teammates at our annual offsite retreat.
• Day 4: Completed a Donut call ?(our tool for connecting colleagues) with a teammate in SF.
• Day 9: Engineering win! I merged my first full feature to master.
• Day 11: I presented a test run of a talk I will be giving at GraphQL Day Bodensee to productboard teammates.
• Day 15: productboard hosted a fun and educational code retreat day for the engineering team.

Skilled people are only a part of the equation. At productboard, I not only work with extremely talented engineers, designers, and PMs, but with kind, helpful, and generous people. We work at a fast pace that feels natural given the incredibly supportive environment we are in. Believe me, you will produce the best code you could dream of writing at productboard. ?

More than a “family”

While most startups consider their team “family”, productboard aims to create friendships by carefully selecting people who share a passion for culture, growth, and kindness. And it shows.

In just one month, I’ve gone bouldering, had lunch with pretty much everyone, and enjoyed impromptu donut and mate mate time with teammates across the company. We have a Slack channel for sharing all kinds of events, and rumor says that we will start going to concerts together very soon…

This type of team building makes for an amazing culture and paves the way for open discussions and constructive conversations that make us all better. All this is reflected in the hard work that we do each work.

Of course, my post wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t mention the many cute office dogs that I get to work with every day. ?

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We are growing our engineering team (and so much more)! Want to join a fun and international team? Check out our career page to see how you can help create a world full of amazing products!