How would you explain SpotMe to your friend in 3 sentences?
SpotMe is the enterprise event platform that helps accelerate customer relationships at scale.
Run hybrid, virtual, and in-person events with a branded and compliant event app, offer a personalized experience, and get deep data insights that flow into your CRM.
The solution itself consists of:
- Backstage – live & on demand content management solution for the event.
- Studio – Our live/virtual/hybrid conferencing solution
- Clients – Web & Mobile Apps
SpotMe - current job openings and Transparent Company Profile
🛠️ Tech stack & Development process at SpotMe
Technologies that we use
Can I choose the hardware? What is your coding setup (IDE, OS, Build server, Cloud provider)?
We adhere to MacOS as a preferred OS. At SpotMe we utilize AWS, Jenkins, Git.
Our software development process
How can I grow as a developer at your company (career paths and learning opportunities)?
Our space did not exist 2 years ago. Now it’s booming. So we are in a hypergrowth mode, actually shaping the future with our team. With that said, you will have plenty of opportunities to grow, gain and share knowledge, on-the-job coaching, and peer code reviews.
An example of the most common career path is Software Developer => Senior Software Developer => Technical Lead or Team Lead => Architect.
Do you prefer always writing your own software for everything or use frameworks if they fit?
As at SpotMe we are always looking for optimal solutions, this entirely depends on the particular scenario.
In case that it is an extremely critical component, we tend to write the code ourselves. Otherwise, we use frameworks that fit.
🔍 Check out the active job openings at SpotMe
👩💻 Company culture
What are your key values and what are some daily work examples of them?
Our values are:
- Curious and always improving
- Diligent with intent
- Humble about oneself
- Proud about our company
- Respectful and positive
Our company values were set by our people, not a marketing agency. So we encourage you to visit https://spotme.com/careers/ and check out our values in our team words.
Our engineering team also greatly values autonomy and ownership. Last but not least, we are proud of the code that we write.
How diverse are your teams? What is the typical team size and structure?
Our teams are highly multicultural. Everyone is different, with different backgrounds and aspirations. Which is just the way we like it. It’s our common values and combined strengths as individuals that make us succeed.
The team size usually represents a typical Scrum team size of 6-7 people.
Do you offer any helpful initiatives for parents with young children?
Parental leave of 2 weeks for new dads and 14 weeks for new mums (Swiss standard). The young parents can also leverage our Work From Anywhere Policy and flexible working times (actually available for all, not only for parents).
Also, If you need 1-2 hours to take care of your kids, no problem — you can block off your calendar, no questions asked.
What is your remote work policy?
We have a Work from Anywhere Policy. Upon joining SpotMe, you will select your preferred working mode:
- Hybrid: have the choice to work remotely or from a selected SpotMe office, as you see fit. There are no constraints on weekdays or the number of days working remotely.
- Remote: work remotely 100%, from your home, or a location of your choice. In addition to the company-issued computer all team members are receiving, you get a lump sum payment for your remote office equipment. You may occasionally visit one of the SpotMe offices.
You can see more detailed information here: https://medium.com/spotme-com/behind-the-scenes-work-from-anywhere-at-spotme-ecf45a2499ff
If you do Agile - how is your agile process & release cycle? How much coding vs meetings/planning?
At SpotMe we embrace the Scrum methodology. Our sprint length is 1 month. We perform our sprint planning every first day of the month for a day. From there the teams perform daily stand-up meetings for 15 minutes. Also, we close the sprint with a sprint review.
We ship valuable features every month.
Do you have some in-house tech workshops or hackathons? Is there an educational budget?
Even though we do not have tech workshops or hackathons, the teams are constantly exchanging knowledge and know-how.
Also, you will have the chance every year to choose a tech event that you would like to join and everything will be covered by the company!
Can I work on my projects or open source for a part of time?
At the moment we do not have such practice.
📖 The Book Question™
What do I need to do to buy a 50$ educational book on company expense?
To submit a purchase request
💼 How does the interview process at SpotMe look like?
- CV review: We review applications to screen for a variety of criteria.
- Get-to-know call with TA Specialist: A Zoom call with the People and Culture team to tell you more about us and see if you have the same values as us and the potential to be a great addition to our team (around 60 mins)
- Technical Task: A task that will give you a chance to showcase your skills (the time given for solving the task depends on the position)
- Meet the team call (discussion of the solution of the tech task): A Zoom call with your future line manager and colleagues to dive deeper into the position and your experience (around 60 mins)
- Meeting with VP Engineering: One-on-one interview with VP Engineering that gives you a chance to learn more about our product strategy and your growth opportunities with us (around 45-60 mins)
Got any questions?
🕵️♂️ Extra - insider interview with Alexander Karaberov
Alexander Karaberov agreed to share a personal opinion about working at SpotMe. He is the Technical Lead, working there since over 4 years.
What are you currently working on at SpotMe
Currently I’m working on scalability and performance aspects of the SpotMe platform's infrastructure. Notably distributed database cluster, maintaining and improving an in-house database and other infrastructure services. Besides this, I also work on the adaptive live streaming pipeline powering our product.
What do you like most about working at SpotMe
In the first place I will put a great team which consists of only nice and supportive people. I really appreciate this, and this is a really sincere opinion with zero slyness in it. Another aspect that appeals to me as an engineer working on the infrastructure are challenging projects, tasks and requirements concerning scalability.
There are a lot of really interesting problems to solve here. Virtual events industry is very demanding with regards to performance and scale. You may have huge spikes and surges of user activity hitting your platform in waves within a short timespan.
Also, amongst recent changes, I relish a flexible work from anywhere policy.
What are the things that are not perfect and you would like to change?
I’d say pressure sometimes may be high and this can affect your normal working routine. I understand that this is a consequence of the industry where the company strives to be a leader, but regardless, there is room for improvement here, I believe. Perhaps hiring more people and thus having more capacity and bandwidth may solve this.
Another thing which is not perfect, in my opinion, is a constant chase for new product features which in certain cases are built on top of inefficient and outdated foundations. This is not always sustainable and can backfire. In my view, there should be a balance with regards to this aspect.