Embracing Flexibility and Empowering Customers: Reflections on My First 6 Months as a HubSpot Engineer

For an engineer interested in solving customer problems, the transition from a small company to working at HubSpot is not as difficult as you may think. Meet Joey Blake, Senior Software Engineer - Joey shares how he was able to dive in, ship products and solve for the customer in his first 6 months at HubSpot.
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My name is Joey Blake and I've have been a Senior Software Engineer at HubSpot for a year, building tools for the CMS platform. I thought I'd take a bit of time to reflect on my first 6 months, and describe what it was like for me to make the transition to an engineering role at HubSpot.

The flexibility, autonomy, and influence that typically comes working within a smaller environment is familiar to me. To take customers' pain points and goals and build simple tools to make their lives easier has always been my purpose. After over a decade working in the web agency world, it was time to apply my skills to a broader platform.

So, why HubSpot? I read HubSpot's Culture Code and it resonated with my approach to engineering throughout my career -- but I was not without questions. Would the culture outlined within the Culture Code sustain? How would I navigate this transition? How many people would I need to interface with to get something done? How bureaucratic would the shipping process be? Would I be able to keep helping people with the speed and flexibility that gives me the most satisfaction?

After onboarding and meeting my team, the codebase and the project board were introduced. Laid out before me was a wish list of additions and enhancements to the HubSpot CMS. Familiar problems, ready for me to solve.

I immediately grabbed the first two: the Search input and Search results modules, building new versions of them both to be modern, easy to configure, and accessible. Thanks to solid patterns and helpful teammates, the code-complete phase was fast and delightful.

But, when it came to thinking about rollout, I moved into more challenging territory. There were many current user scenarios that I had to take into account to ensure a smooth deployment. In my previous company and role, I would have needed to address these tasks on my own. At HubSpot, I was able to describe the problems to my new teammates and lean on their expertise and swift execution of the task at hand. No red tape, no complicated hoops to jump through or TPS reports. Just execution. 

While testing and rollout plans commenced, I was able to continue moving forward on other challenges to solve. I was able to grab three new additions to the CMS, the Image slider, Image grid, and Tabbed card modules. These were new features so building happened with the same speed.  But without legacy upgrade paths to consider, they had a simpler release schedule. And we queued them up for release with the previous two. 

These five modules were released to our customers within my first 6 months at HubSpot!

New and improved search input and search results modules.

Image slider, image grid and tabbed card CMS additions, flagged as new when they were released.

This early experience answered all the questions that I had. For me, HubSpot feels like a small company wrapped in a large one. It pairs the flexibility, autonomy, and influence of a small environment with the resources and benefits of a large organization. As an engineer at HubSpot, I found we have the ability to ship quickly while still having the benefits of data to influence decisions, and the wisdom and support of stellar peers. 

The customer first approach to engineering is a beacon to guiding decisions in the same way that an expert consultant would approach solving the problems of an individual customer. Being able to amplify those results to all HubSpot’s CMS customers is very satisfying, and motivating for me as an engineer. The engineering experience at HubSpot is what I was hoping it would be. I feel impactful, supported and valued - and I'm able to see my work in practice quickly. 

Does Joey's experience sound like something you're looking for? We're hiring - check out our Careers Page for your next opportunity! And for a behind-the-scenes look at our culture, visit our Careers Blog or follow us on Instagram @HubSpotLife.