Much like Monte Carlo’s data observability platform finds better ways for data to be useful for its customers, it has found its employees from unique and unconventional places and backgrounds.
WHAT THEY DO
As creators of the industry’s first end-to-end data observability platform, Monte Carlo helps businesses trust in their data and drive better decision-making with accurate and reliable data reporting.
Devon McMahon, an outbound sales development representative, earned a wealth of experience working in local municipalities as a 9-1-1 dispatcher and police officer before ultimately ending up in sales. Working in law enforcement meant many long hours away from home — pushing McMahon to consider a career with healthier work-life boundaries.
“I found myself unbalanced with the amount of time I was away from family and how much of myself I was leaving behind at work every day,” McMahon said.
When McMahon’s friends suggested he’d do well in sales, he was thrilled to explore the parallels between tech sales and police work.
“I was an expert in California criminal law and process similar to how a salesperson is an expert in the product and problem it can solve,” McMahon explained. “The role is to be a guide and identify positive outcomes.”
After over a decade of working outside of the tech industry, McMahon found his way to Monte Carlo, a startup environment where growth opportunities were made easier to find by a talented team of leaders and mentors, all of whom encourage new employees to take ownership of their own career paths — whatever they may look like. While a career shift can feel to many like a setback, finding a role at Monte Carlo meant also finding a good, balanced place to thrive for McMahon.
“The environment nurtures my professional and personal growth,” he said. “Sales is hard in a different way than being a police officer,” he said.
On the sales team, the support from experienced account executives and management allowed McMahon to ask questions, bounce ideas off others and envision his future in tech sales. A top-performing SDR, McMahon is now a team lead, sharing the lessons he’s learning with junior sales colleagues — many of those lessons emerged from years in public service. Now, as an SDR leader, McMahon sees his former career as unparalleled experience in customer service.
“I knew the folks in the community I served didn’t get to choose who showed up to their call, and it was my responsibility to provide the best service possible. Often I would be talking to people on the worst day of their lives, and I might have been the first police officer they’d ever met. I wanted each person to understand why I was doing what I was doing and what to expect next.”
“The role is to be a guide and identify positive outcomes.”
Now, McMahon’s professional first impressions with the general public have an entirely different context, but thanks to the culture at Monte Carlo, he’s well-equipped with a unique background that sets him apart as a tech salesperson.
While tech sales may have been the endpoint for McMahon as he transitioned from policework, for Backend Engineer Sam Smith, tech sales was the starting point. While it only took a year for Smith to realize tech sales was not the right fit, the exposure led him to a new goal: a role in software engineering.
Smith quit his sales role to drive for Lyft full-time while attending a coding boot camp, which landed him his first role in support engineering. Eventually, this led him to a support engineer position at Monte Carlo.
“It has been a windy road to get to this point,” Smith said.
When approached about a position at Monte Carlo, Smith clarified that, while he was excited about a support engineer position, his ultimate goal was engineering itself. Leveraging his experience in support engineering for his first year at the startup, Smith helped build the early support team, ultimately leading him to his first proper software engineer title — a lateral, internal move at Monte Carlo.
“When I became a software engineer, I fulfilled a goal that I had set out on almost eight years prior,” Smith said. “It was by far the biggest career success of my life and something that still gives me a lot of personal satisfaction to think about.”
“Becoming a software engineer was by far the biggest career success of my life and something that still gives me a lot of personal satisfaction to think about.”
This career pivot started with Smith’s years of experience as a support engineer, which prepared him well for a fast-paced tech startup environment. As a support engineer, Smith’s skillset for “survivability” in navigating unfamiliar technology allowed him to confidently tackle new challenges, utilizing the same skills to grow as a software engineer working on new projects.
“As a support engineer, you have to be able to move fast and be ok with getting thrown into new technologies and documentation and quickly pull out useful information,” Smith said. “In a lot of ways, it feels like every project I worked on in the first few months as a software engineer were stretch projects.”
Joining a robust team of software engineers with decades of experience, Smith has found joy in code reviews and regular conversations about tech-related topics as continuous opportunities to become a better engineer. While his team moves quickly, Smith has embraced the speed as an “absolute blessing” as he gets a variety of engineering experience. Now, finally, on his preferred career path, Smith feels all the more excited about where this journey will take him.
“I have had jobs before where the thought of being in the same role five years down the road would fill me with dread,” Smith said. “Now I think about being a software engineer at Monte Carlo five, ten years down the road, and it makes me really excited.”
“I think about being a software engineer at Monte Carlo five, ten years down the road, and it makes me really excited.”
Stories like Smith’s and McMahon’s are not atypical on the Monte Carlo team. As Head of Recruiting, Brenda Tern has seen many similar stories of exciting career growth at Monte Carlo, including her own.
With years of experience in recruiting leadership, Tern joined Monte Carlo to help find the right talent for the growing organization, and over a year and a half, her role expanded to cover human resources. As budding companies, startups typically have a significant gap in HR resources, and as Tern became responsible for more HR-related areas of the company, she discovered a “true calling and passion for the entire people function” beyond recruiting.
“I've gained more experience during my time at Monte Carlo than I ever had in any other role due to the unstructured environment that makes our culture so unique,” said Tern.
“I've gained more experience during my time at Monte Carlo than I ever had in any other role due to the unstructured environment that makes our culture so unique.”
As someone uniquely positioned to speak on Monte Carlo’s career growth opportunities, Tern explained that employees are given autonomy in their career path. While not everyone holds an end goal in mind, leadership at Monte Carlo encourages their direct reports to ask questions and take on stretch projects while they can.
“We want everyone to advocate for how they see their careers evolve — and leaders are there to help provide guidance and feedback, but ultimately it's up to the individual,” said Tern.
Additionally, Tern cited the success of a recently established mentorship program, where members of the women's ERG are paired with employees looking for career guidance, and executive coaching is available to employees who request it.
Helping to provide many of these newer career opportunities is Tern, who has an exciting Monte Carlo career journey all her own. From recruiting to the complex world of benefits, compensation, leadership coaching and more, Tern is helping shape the careers of present and future employees at Monte Carlo Data.
“Everyone has an opportunity to make an impact and grow at Monte Carlo.”
