Embarking on a professional journey after maternity leave can be thrilling and challenging. After spending six fulfilling years at another company, the desire for growth and new opportunities tugged at Briana. Coincidentally, a recruiter from HubSpot reached out on LinkedIn, sparking a series of conversations and research into the company culture. Convinced that HubSpot aligned perfectly with her aspirations, Briana started a new chapter in the interview process.
Keep reading to find out more about life at HubSpot and Briana!
Describe your journey to HubSpot.
After being at my last company for six years, I had just returned from maternity leave and considered switching things up. I was eager for growth and opportunities to stretch while also keeping in mind I had just entered the world of parenting six months ago. Coincidentally, a recruiter reached out on LinkedIn, and I was open to chatting. Fast forward several conversations and research into the company culture, I was sure it would be exactly what I was looking for. I went through the interview process and started several weeks later. It's been a fun and surprising journey since.
What work option did you pick and why?
I chose @home; I live in Virginia with my partner's family. Not only do I love Virginia, but I love the community of friends we have here and being so close to family.
What is your #HubSpot Community?
#BlackHub. When I first joined, it was nice to see a community of other black peers thriving and supporting one another. BlackHub is a welcoming and open community, and I enjoy connecting on Slack. There's always a Black Engineers Slack channel, which was nice to see.
Describe a typical day in your role.
My ideal day looks like below, though. To be honest, sometimes it's a little less planned and a little more go go go. 😀
- Review Slack and emails to catch up on alerts, pull requests/comments, and general news to prepare for the day.
- I usually go over our team planning board once to prep my top two development tasks for the day and see what everyone has teed up to work on.
- Check-in on Slack and see how the team is doing.
Then, depending on the day, I flow in and out of deep work and collaborative meetings (ad hoc and planned) to:
- Help remove blockers for team members.
- Groom new work
- Perform code reviews
- Lead team syncs (we'll do some brainstorming, troubleshooting, on-call reviews etc.)
- Help triage and remediate alerts/incidents that pop up.
- Make progress on my top two development items.
- Prep for the upcoming day by reviewing lingering pull requests y/t from the team and preparing for tomorrow's meetings.
Tell us about a challenge you're working to solve right now.
I am currently looking at many systems and rethinking and reevaluating designs to unlock our next level of scale and reduce the team's operational burden. It's easy just to scale but harder to scale gracefully and evolve as the company and customers evolve.
What's one thing you've worked on that you're really proud of?
Growing my team from 2 to 5 engineers and fostering a more collaborative and connected environment while maintaining autonomy and increasing our productivity.
In your own words, what makes working at HubSpot unique?
Flexible and autonomous with wickedly smart and generally kind people.
What do you like to do outside of work?
Lots of family time with my two kids and husband. I am very involved in my church and love being plugged into our Hill City church community. I practice hot yoga and functional exercise, and I'm still trying to get back into running post-baby number 2. I also love being outside, doing house projects, gardening, baking, and reading.
Learn more about HubSpot’s culture on our careers website and follow HubSpot Life on Instagram as we continue to share employee highlights, internal celebrations, learnings, and more. Interested in Sales @ HubSpot? Learn more here!
