The key element of success for software engineers is to always be learning; in fact, this is a quality we look for in our new hire candidates. At Trulia, we help our team grow through intensive in-house training, employee-led book clubs and many online training options.
One example of this is our offering of free Code School classes to all new hires, no matter if they’re part of the engineering organization. We have worked with Code School for many years as an online training resource and we routinely recognize those Trulians who actively take courses. Every month, we give a shout out to the top five course participants in our internal Engineering All-Hands meetings, giving them kudos for their choice to continue developing their technical skills and expertise. Occasionally, we mix things up and host a challenge to see who can accumulate the most learning points in a specified period of time. At the end of each course, participants take a quiz and earn points by answering questions correctly. At the end of our most recent month-long challenge, we counted all the points and identified the top five leaders at our latest All-Hands. Beyond the fame, we also handed out gift cards to our winners to celebrate their accomplishments.
Ellesse Schneider, engineering executive administrator here at Trulia, runs this learning program and was the originator of the idea. As she explains it, “We all have good intentions to keep learning and honing our crafts, but it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day. We thought that by making things a little bit more fun – and by giving public recognition for completing courses – we might inspire more people to participate and continue to grow.”
She was right. Since deploying this program, we’ve seen an uptick in the number of people taking courses, and it translates to our productivity and products.
These are just some of the things we do at Trulia to ensure our employees feel supported in their professional development. In addition to this, I’m excited to announce we are also partnering with Pluralsight starting this month, which will open a host of new and more advanced training content for our team. If this type of culture sounds appealing to you, come and join us! You can check out our open job opps here.
