U.S. business magnate Henry Ford once said, “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.”
At these Chicago area companies, the featured employees similarly recognize the role that supportive, aligned teams have played in their professional accomplishments.
The featured engineering pros say they felt initial sparks for their respective companies — ActiveCampaign and Iron Galaxy Studios — during the interview and hiring process, when they learned about the organizations’ exciting and challenging projects. But what ultimately compelled them to stay has been their colleagues and managers, who often went out of their ways to share expertise, answer questions and provide opportunities for gradual skills development.
Thanks to these intentional efforts and more, those featured say their companies have nurtured cultures that prize open communication, passion for the work and learning from honest mistakes. They connected with Built In Chicago to share more about how their companies — both hiring now — have created successful, forward-moving teams.
ActiveCampaign provides a customer experience automation platform that helps more than 185,000 businesses connect with their clients.
At what point in the interview and hiring process did you realize that ActiveCampaign was the company for you?
I joined ActiveCampaign in April 2019. At the time, I was moving to Chicago, and ActiveCampaign was the first company I applied to. I received a take-home coding challenge after my recruiter screen, and I was surprised at what I received; it was a realistic scenario, one that was very practical and similar to what I’d see on the job. That coding challenge gave me an inside look into how ActiveCampaign employees are supported in their roles.
Meeting my team was just the cherry on top. They were all kind, had great energy and exuded a lot of empathy. I could tell the team felt like a community that lifted one another up and enabled each others’ growth.
The questions asked by the hiring team were practical and intentional. I’ve always cared about customer impact, and it was something the hiring manager touched upon within the first few minutes of my interview. Each conversation solidified my excitement and eagerness to join the ActiveCampaign team and contribute to its positive impact on customers.
Each conversation solidified my excitement and eagerness to join the ActiveCampaign team and contribute to its positive impact on customers.”
How did your colleagues set you up for success and help you get acclimated?
When I joined ActiveCampaign, I was the only engineer at the time working on an application. This was a bit daunting for me, as I was an entry-level software engineer and it was my first time working with this specific framework. I had my anxieties, but the entire team was incredibly kind, patient and empathetic.
They made sure I was set up for success and had all the resources I needed to meaningfully contribute in my role. We planned out our work in a detailed way, and we were mindful about the time that was needed to learn new skills.
I had a fantastic team of supportive individuals who showed up every day with the same goal in mind: to make a positive impact on our customers’ lives by providing a stellar application that was easy to use and incredibly informative. As a team, we were able to do just that.
Since joining ActiveCampaign, what has been your favorite success story?
Since joining ActiveCampaign more than four years ago, I’ve had several successes that I am incredibly proud of. One of my earliest successes was delivering a redesign of the application that I worked on as a team of one. I learned a lot about front-end development in those six months, and I also had some fantastic designs, mindful support from the product team and willingness from other engineers to answer questions and point me in the right direction.
We were able to dramatically improve the user interface, speed and general performance of the application. We saw a drastic drop in customer escalations, and over the course of the following two years, we were able to add continuous improvements that modernized the application and increased performance exponentially.
Customer impact is something that’s incredibly important to me. Knowing that this application is used every day by people working on their businesses — making their lives easier with the information we display — fills me with a lot of joy and pride. That’s why we do what we do. Making people’s lives easier through software is one of life’s sweetest victories.
Iron Galaxy Studios is an independent video game developer that has produced more than 60 shipped titles.
At what point in the interview and hiring process did you realize that Iron Galaxy Studios was the company for you?
When I saw the passion that each person had during my interview process, I realized that Iron Galaxy was the company for me. People seemed genuinely interested in discussing my previous projects and sharing their knowledge with me. The fellow engineers I spoke with were very enthusiastic about their work, which was something I had not experienced in other interviews.
After my interview, I knew that I wanted to join this team of passionate people of various disciplines to overcome challenges and accomplish great feats together.
How did your colleagues set you up for success and help you get acclimated?
I had to learn a variety of new languages and tools when I joined the team at Iron Galaxy. I was nervous initially, but my project lead was very understanding. I was eased into my work with tasks that provided me with opportunities to learn and gain experience.
My lead and other senior team members were always incredibly open to communication, and this made me feel comfortable reaching out whenever I needed assistance. When I made mistakes, I never felt shame. My coworkers facilitated an environment where I was always able to learn from those experiences.
I was provided with opportunities outside of my comfort zone to learn from, and this helped me grow tremendously. Over time, I was gradually given more responsibilities and trusted to achieve resolutions to the complicated problems we tackle at Iron Galaxy.
I was provided with opportunities outside of my comfort zone to learn from, and this helped me grow tremendously.”
Since joining Iron Galaxy Studios, what has been your favorite success story?
My favorite success story was when I implemented a system to process requests in our game automatically by using a new API that was set up by our partner. This was uncharted territory for me and my team, as it involved features on our server that we had never used before, and I was trusted with finding a solution to the problem.
I had to learn via documentation and through plugging in unfamiliar pieces. I also had to reach out to our partner and troubleshoot with them. The process exposed some issues and documentation that we needed to update to assist other developers in the future.
With the help of my manager, we came up with a plan to tackle these tasks. In the end, after overcoming a fair number of hurdles, I was able to create a tool to automate process requests in our game. After finishing the tool, I gained a lot of confidence in my abilities and learned a lot about using new features.
