A major challenge for tech companies is how to remain resilient despite a potential economic slowdown. Leading through macroeconomic uncertainty, there’s a need to build innovation and compete. To achieve the feat, tech companies are shaping engineers in real-time by providing them with meaningful opportunities, on-the-job training, and sharing what challenges they might face. While these efforts have always been the core of nurturing talent, it’s becoming an established practice in the day-to-day operations of tech companies.
At Intuit India, engineers get solid support from the Tech Culture Champions Community. Five years ago, the Tech Culture Champions Community was formed to strengthen Intuit’s talent philosophy—which is to empower engineers to learn, grow, connect, and scale. The Community integrates Intuit’s people culture into the tech culture to boost innovation, and paves the way for teams to operate like a well-oiled machine.
The Community consists of a network of technologists who’ve mapped out a charter based on their shared challenges and experiences in the workplace. Their ability to analyze and take on responsibilities beyond their scope of work is enormously valuable for engineers. These technologists help fill communication gaps to accelerate tech learning, anticipate the unknowns, identify internal and external opportunities for engineers, and invent new structures to organize efforts. Together, teams are able to leverage each other’s insights and drive change in a bigger, better way. Read on to learn about the Tech Culture Champion Community’s long-standing impact on Intuit engineers.
Turbocharge engineers to do the best work of their lives
Being productive and happy on the job go together. This balance has encouraged the Community to run initiatives that can enable engineers to scale. A recent win was the City Map awareness campaign, which was launched by the Community in India and later adopted by Intuit sites globally. Intuit’s City Map provides engineers with a complete view of the platform and increases their visibility into existing capabilities.
Building City Map awareness has created a movement because it helps engineers scale massively and increase productivity across levels in the company. In fact, the Community launched Dev@Intuit sessions to deliver a practical use case of City Map awareness. A simple problem statement is given to the new hires and other engineers participating in the session. Engineers can use the City Map to explore and identify capabilities to solve the problem. The exercise allows engineers to familiarize themselves with the City Map and embrace a platform mindset.
These are fundamentals to increase engineers’ skills, make Intuit’s tech environment more comprehensive, and deliver successful customer solutions. The output is that engineers feel good about the work they do—and are thinking broadly to disrupt. “We also have capability roadshows to build City Map awareness. These roadshows identify crucial topics across capabilities and discuss them extensively, ratcheting up engineers’ readiness to perform,” says Ankush Sharma, staff SW engineer, and co-lead of Tech Culture Champions Community.
The Community has long been interested in designing impactful initiatives to boost engagement and productivity. They seek feedback from engineers to ensure these programs align with their interest—such as React learning and distributed system architecture learning.
Set the perfect stage for engineers to build their personal brand
“A few years ago, blogging and speaking at events was a niche. Only a few had an opportunity to speak in external conferences—and wrote to share their knowledge with the world. Today, things have changed, and yet many don’t know where to start,” Ankush says. “To beat this challenge, the Community created internal channels where external speaking opportunities are listed and open to all.”
The Community has tailored workshops for engineers who are drawn to speaking at tech conferences and meetups. These extensive workshops help engineers build a strong communication channel with their target audiences. Engineers share their knowledge and work at these events, building their personal brand and strengthening Intuit’s brand.
Engineers are empowered to use Intuit’s open source, which fosters a culture of collaboration and contribution within the company. And of course, the Community makes sure there are guardrails in place so engineers can present at conferences without worrying about implications.
Underpin the Intuit tech ecosystem
The Community constantly demonstrates its mission to nurture a learning mindset for engineers. Learning and re-learning the basics in tech is often forgotten because of automation and ease of building solutions. Keeping this in mind, the Community offers programs and activities for engineers to develop their craft and learn from each other.
“We have virtual fireside chats with Intuit leaders, showcase the awesome work through blogs, refresh engineers’ memories on basic technologies and learn the advanced to stay relevant,” Director—Global Brands and Corporate Communications Anshuman Kumar, who’s also the sponsor for Tech Culture Champions Community, Intuit India.
Then, the Community extends support in organizing large-scale events like Global Engineering Days where engineers can work on an idea they are passionate about outside their scope of work. Beyond this, technology communities like XD and PM lean in on the Community to host other events at scale. “These events build capabilities for us to roll out something massive, and they define the rich tech culture at Intuit,” says Anshuman. “They shape engineers to be engaged, high performing technologists in the industry.”
Want to connect with Intuit’s Tech Culture Champions and build innovations you’re passionate about? Check out open positions to join us.