In some cases, a company’s mission statement can feel to employees like corporate mumbo jumbo. But at Placester, engineers see clearly how their day-to-day work ties to the company’s vision and the users they serve.
“I specifically came here to be part of a company and a product with a pretty tangible mission,” said Michael Rapp, lead software engineer. “It's a mission you can get behind and understand. You can see its impact relatively easily.”
Placester helps independent real estate agents stay competitive at a time when homebuyers increasingly turn to the web to research and purchase properties. The company offers real estate agents a suite of digital marketing products, giving them the same feature sets and explorability as popular sites such as Zillow and Trulia.
And their internal research has found that the independent real estate agents who use its digital marketing tools increase sales by as much as 31 percent — a significant step toward the company's goal of helping small businesses stay competitive in an ever-tightening marketplace.
We recently met with Placester developers to find out how the company drives the product forward, draws in strong candidates and makes it all work in spite of the fact that the team is spread across the country.
PLACESTER AT A GLANCE
WHAT THEY DO: Placester gives individual real estate agents a suite of online marketing tools to help them promote their brand, manage relationships and grow business.
WHERE THEY DO IT: Headquartered in Boston, but with a growing tech team that sits out of Chicago.
WHO THEY DO IT FOR: Individual real estate agents who are competing in the era of Zillow and Trulia.
IDEAL CANDIDATE: You’re an ideal engineering candidate if you’re eager to immerse yourself in new technologies and learn new skills quickly. Also important: Be open to feedback and collaboration.
How does the engineering team help achieve the goals of the company? After receiving an assignment, do you just put your heads down to code, or do you feel you're able to step back and look at the product more holistically?
Megan Lothian, director of product management: We just had our weekly engineering meeting. The product strategy team shared a session that overviewed a market comparison to our competitors. I think it gets the whole company thinking, and not just the engineers, about where we are going next.
Jose Bucio, senior software engineer: My job is pretty user-facing, and there's so much you have to know about the product. We get a chance to actually play with it first and understand how a real estate agent would actually use it. You can get into this trap where you just continue to code and not fully understand the product. With our team, I think we've done a good job of using it and understanding why somebody would want to use it.
Michael Rapp, lead software engineer: It's really interesting, being on the data side, to go through the shared process of getting listing data from the internet, then getting it into our system. It is not a trivial thing. That's why there's only a couple companies that really do it well. When the job gets hard, I realize that we're solving this hard problem for customers. Without products like ours, how could anybody buy a home? It's kind of crazy.
We’re also trying to scale up our products, but it's a different way to take on scale. We're trying to scale our frequency since there are only so many houses in the U.S. We don't necessarily deal in the volumes that other companies do.
With your headquarters in Boston and the team here in Chicago, how do you collaborate with each other when you’re spread halfway across the country?
Bucio: It's second nature. Now, it's like, "Oh, let's just have a quick Hangout." It's equivalent to just turning around and talking to someone. I will just fire up a Hangout with someone without even asking sometimes.
You've also mirrored your meeting rooms, so a conference room in Chicago looks similar to one in Boston. Is that so everyone on the team feels like they're having a cohesive experience?
Lothian: A group of us went there recently. It felt eerily similar because they used a lot of the same furniture and tables.
What drew you to the company?
Rapp: I specifically came here to be part of a company and a product with a pretty tangible mission. It's a mission you can get behind and understand. You can see its impact relatively easily. In talking with Placester’s engineering leaders, their mission and vision is to have this blank slate of re-architecture, and cloud computing, and distributed systems, and reimagining the possibility with the new technology that's out there on AWS. It's a wonderful opportunity to immerse yourself in that new technology — and learn it at as fast as you can.
Bucio: The people aspect has been great. For the teams we're working with, the cross-collaboration with everyone has been pretty open. We're very good about realizing our weaknesses and strengths, and helping people get up to speed with the technology. We’re good at sharing information out to everyone. Your chance to make an impact on the company is pretty huge here. I feel like we're just scratching the surface of it, and if people come in with expertise or ideas, it's pretty easy to get by.
Those kind of people are hard to come by, I’d imagine. Do you think the Chicago tech scene can support all these company’s needs for such great talent?
Bucio: When I first got out of school, a lot of the jobs in downtown Chicago were more business-related jobs. Personally, I moved out of state to get more into a hardware or software role just because there wasn't so much going on here. Now, there's meetups almost every week. It got to a point where you would have to choose between three or four different meetups that you wanted to go to. It's growing. It's getting pretty big in Chicago.
Rapp: I feel like it's staying small at the same time, too. I'm pretty new to Chicago. This is the second company I've been at here, and I'm amazed to see how everything seems uniquely connected. I came from Seattle — and there is a tight knit piece to it — but it doesn't seem as tight as Chicago.
You’ve drawn in some people really dedicated to the mission. Anything specific you look for in candidates?
Lothian: From a product perspective, having an engineer who can explain really clearly, in not-as-technical terms why we might go with one approach as opposed to another is important to me. It’s also important to be open to collaborating — not just wanting to sit there and code all day, but really wanting to work together to come up with solutions.
Rapp: When I meet with candidates, I really try to gauge their level of their hunger and eagerness to learn and do new things, or at least apply what they know rapidly. A lot of what we're doing is certainly new, but it's a new space for a lot of us, especially the cloud computing. We can't solve the mission without eagerness and willingness to try new things, but we also can't solve the mission unless everyone is open to learning from their mistakes. We try to find people who blend that hunger with poise and problem-solving skills — that’s the type of person that I'm looking for.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
