As a summer intern for the engineering team at Fivetran, I’ve seen its culture firsthand and had a chance to understand how the company is working towards achieving its mission. In this post, I want to share my experience.

Fivetran has been on an amazing growth path from its start at Y Combinator. The company is expanding quickly, and the sales team is 'crushing it' by expanding our user base and consistently meeting revenue goals. The company still has its start-up quirks: procedures are still being established, the CEO is only a couple seats away from interns, and everyone knows everyone else by name.

The people here are amazing. It’s friendly, you learn a lot, and the team is fun to work alongside. In fact, I’ve noticed three things the company does well and hope it continues as it grows. Mainly, the startup is transparent, collaborative, and most importantly, knows how to have fun.

Freedom to Learn

As a start-up, Fivetran gives its employees a lot of freedom. Physically, this means no walls. Compared to my previous summer internship at a large company of 30,000, separated by buildings and cubicles, the open-office layout is refreshing. I’m only a short stroll away from the head of HR and sales team.

More importantly, Fivetran gives you the freedom to work on a variety of assignments. Developers are able to solve a diverse range of tickets, from server-side issues to building new connectors.

If you are not an engineer, you are more than welcome to ping one and learn the technical side. The same holds true in reverse. It's been helpful to talk to salespeople and learn what they do and hear the customer perspective. By understanding the diverse aspects of a business, I gain the context and transparency to improve the projects I'm working on. The freedom to learn is something I’ve really enjoyed at Fivetran.

Team-Oriented Culture

One of my favorite things at Fivetran is the biweekly global meeting. Here, every office comes together in a big video call and goes through developments across all teams and geographies. It’s awesome to have everyone, from our headquarters in Oakland to our satellite offices in Dublin, Bangalore, and Denver, come together and see the work from each department cultivate into a growing product.

The biggest positive of the team-oriented culture is how we handle challenges. As the product grows, naturally problems arise. I love how the team tackles issues: no fingers are pointed. Instead, everyone comes together and focuses on the problem rather than the person who caused it. It’s one of the small, yet huge signs of a team-centric group.

Small Things Make It Fun

Every company has its own fun, zany taste in culture and humor. The people at Fivetran and the everyday activities certainly make working fun and interesting. For example, the Fivetran engineering team has something called “superheroes”, a weekly two-person rotation that tackles urgent development issues. Lunch conversations go anywhere from our current projects to methods on how to survive an elevator if it’s falling. Our VP of Engineering will occasionally drop a pun that gets a chuckle from nearby people who are lucky enough to hear it.

The past eight weeks have been a treat. Personally, I’ve grown a lot as a developer, and I've made some awesome friends. And it’s exciting to be a part of a team that’s growing so much. The sky's the limit!

To learn more about open positions at Fivetran, visit our careers page.