After a grueling 3 months or so, my job search has come to an end. I’ve officially signed with Dropbox and start working the 26th of September! I’m seriously excited as Dropbox has so many opportunities for growth. I’ll go into extensive detail in regards to my entire App Academy and job search experience in another post. The post will be riddled with personal experiences, advice and tidbits I’ve learned, and tons of resources I used to get to where I am today. But in the mean time, I just wanted to briefly update you guys on the fact that I signed with Dropbox, and why.

Here’s a couple points I’ll touch on:

• Culture
• Interviewing Experience
• Onboarding
• Growth Opportunities

Dropbox has an amazing culture. The moment I walked into the lobby and spoke to the front desk receptionists, I felt welcomed. Everyone smiles, they’re responsive and encourage curiosity. The bright open office feel, the excited buzz and chatter while people are collaborating, and the food, all really contribute together to create a space worth staying. The people were incredible and made my onsite experience just that much more amazing. Speaking of interviewing experiences…

My interviewing experience at Dropbox was the best I’ve ever had hands down. You know it’s going to be a good experience when you get an e-mail saying “Bring your laptop, you’ll need it.” Dropbox is doing their best to make waves to revamp the engineering/developer interview. They presented me with problems I’d ACTUALLY be working on, simulating situations I’d actually be in. I was allowed to Google and StackOverflow, and look up documentation, staples of every developer. I literally only used the white board to diagram out my thought process, which was to help me visualize the problem more than anything.

Dropbox onboarding is really awesome. You start off with one week’s worth of orientation, taking care of signing up for benefits, attending lectures and watching videos, taking care of HR related stuff. The following six weeks are what I’m really excited about. Dropbox calls it a Residency. You get assigned to smaller scale issues to fix under the guidance of a formal mentor. That’s one of the things I love most about Dropbox, they have a formal mentorship program that’s not even limited to people in your team. You could have a mentor in other areas of Engineering, or even outside of Engineering, which is seriously awesome. You will also eventually mentor others, which is really exciting too!

Finally, Dropbox has incredible growth opportunities. The ability to move across teams to pursue other interesting areas of Dropbox is incredibly easy, and completely supported by your manager within reason. The ability to move into more senior roles and elevate your career is completely supported by your manager, and with progress reports along the way and weekly meetings to align your tasks with your goals, doesn’t seem like you can go wrong. I had asked a question during my on-site that was incredibly well received: “How do Managers deal with mistakes made by engineers?” And their answers impressed me. The focus wasn’t at all on blaming the engineer, rather it was to further improve their system and check points to prevent future mistakes, as well as to make sure the engineer was aware of the mistake and learnt from it. Mistakes were welcomed as learning opportunities, granted as long as they weren’t the same mistakes made repeatedly by the same engineer.

Overall, I’m super excited about starting this new chapter in my life. I have a feeling I’ll be at Dropbox for the long term, taking in as much as I can as a sponge.

Look forward to the next couple posts that break down my journey into tech. Until then, take care! I’ll talk to you guys later!