Zoosk R&D – The Second Term
After a very successful first session of Zoosk R&D, we soon realized we were on to something and quickly began hiring for our next term. If you’re not familiar with Zoosk R&D, it’s an engineering on-boarding program we started at Zoosk, which brings a team of new hires into the engineering organization to work together on a new idea. It essentially has a ‘startup within a startup’ mentality with the outcome being a working prototype to present to the executive team. The presentation and prototype should show why our idea is the ‘biggest thing since sliced bread’. You can read more on the beginnings of the program and other benefits of Zoosk R&D in a great blog post by my colleague, Doug Wehemeier, about our inaugural session.
As Doug mentioned, since each graduate of the Zoosk R&D program became familiar with the tools, processes, and environment at Zoosk, they were able to assimilate into one of our existing engineering teams and quickly start contributing to it. Zoosk R&D was originally targeted towards more junior developers, but we realized from the first session that any engineer no matter their level, could come in and benefit from it. That being said, my team consisted of myself along with three new Zoosk developers with a varying range of experience. I also had a part time product manager and graphic designer borrowed from the Web Team at Zoosk, so there were six people in total working on the project. Without giving away the next big thing ;D, the team began work on Project ‘X’. I was lucky enough to be able to lead the second R&D session which went from late August to early November and these are a few thoughts from it.
1. On-boarding rules now.
I think the most obvious benefit from Zoosk R&D is that the new on-boarding process is much more improved for everyone involved. Having been the lead engineer of the web team for a couple of years now, I’ve on-boarded a fair number of new developers. We typically would assign the new developer a mentor and slowly start by wading into the code with small bug fixes and minor changes while going over processes, tools, and other technologies we use. With Zoosk R&D, we really turn that methodology upside down.
Zoosk R&D moves fast! After meeting with the new team, laying out the new idea, and finally getting everyone’s buy-off on it, we typically end the meeting with, “OK, we have three months to build this, let’s go!” For newly hired Zoosk engineers and any engineer in general, there’s nothing like building new software and Zoosk R&D allows you come in and immediately do that.
Also, instead of just explaining what a particular team or technology does, the new hires have an opportunity to get hands on with the code in most cases. At the end of the term, the new developers not only have an abstract idea of what the other teams in the company build, they now have been given the time and resources to actually dive into how they build it.
2. Cross training for current employees.
Another benefit I noticed after concluding my session of R&D was that current Zoosk employees were able to experiment in roles that were different than their primary job responsibilities. One of the former UI developers on the web team was interested in product management and was able to assume the role as the part time PM for the R&D team. Since then, she’s brought her passion for the product with her as the lead of the User Experience team at Zoosk, concentrating on our end user satisfaction. Another developer was able continue his interest in graphic design as the main designer of the R&D product for that term.
3. Team building
Starting at a new company can often be intimidating for a lot of people, and I felt that the R&D program really took that extra step to help put new employees at ease. Since the team consists mainly of new hires, you’re starting alongside people who are in the same situation as you.
In the old on-boarding model, after starting on a particular team, you end up interacting mainly with that specific team as opposed to members of other teams throughout the engineering organization. While you eventually get to know people in the other teams, it naturally can take a bit longer. With Zoosk R&D, it really helped to accelerate the team building process throughout the organization. Since the members of the team you just spent your first three months at Zoosk with will also be transitioning into other teams throughout the company, it’s nice to have already built up relationships and a camaraderie with the other engineers. This wasn’t one of the main reasons we started Zoosk R&D, but it just turned out to be a very nice side effect.
Overall, Zoosk R&D was a great experience for me and everyone involved in the project. With our third term of R&D underway, we have already expanded the program to six developers, a graphic designer, and a product manager. After the success of our previous R&D sessions, I can’t wait to see what the new team comes up with!
