As of December, I’m a technical lead at RapDev. New job, who ‘dis?!

I wanted to take some time to share my experience of the recruiting and onboarding process here at RapDev because who knows? Maybe you, too, are looking for your next opportunity.

First, a little about me. I’ve been working as a ServiceNow consultant for the past 10 years. I’ve been employed by companies ranging in size from fifty-person start-ups to 700k global behemoths, and I’ve partnered with customers whose industries range from pet insurance to federal defense. While the business models vary, the best results happen when people come together and do hard things because they care about each other’s success at least as much as some abstract bottom line.

This sentiment is exactly what attracted me to RapDev – a focus on creating community at work, giving back to the community, and measuring our success by that of our customers and employees. When I began to explore more about the company after eyeing an engineering role that popped up in my LinkedIn feed, what I read felt like a refreshing contrast to the “slop” that otherwise saturates social media. It’s getting harder to differentiate what’s real from what’s fake, and here was a place that, to me, felt real.

So I applied.

True to its name and its focus on “Rap-id Dev-elopment”, I heard back within days from a recruiter who wanted to arrange an interview. Lauren explained to me that RapDev’s focus is engineering first, results, and people who like to be hands-on in solving problems. Oh, and assholes aren’t tolerated.

My interest continued to grow. 

I proceeded on to a technical interview that both challenged me to show what I could do while inviting me to ask questions and check my understanding. It didn't matter if I made a mistake as long as I could work it out in a team.  I felt that my interviewers and I were “in it” together, and these were people I could learn with and from.

For my final interview, I was invited to the local Boston office to meet with the company’s founder, Tameem. I was greeted warmly by a man with an impressive mane of curls in a space that welcomed collaboration on couches, included a neon sign over the refrigerator that read, “F*ck the diet,” googly eyes glued onto the Nespresso machine, and SO MANY SNACKS. I showed up in my typical interview attire - no-nonsense slacks and a button-up shirt, and was informed that the dress code here is more of a “jeans and t-shirt” sorta vibe. To me, the best interviews are always the ones that feel like conversations and not interrogations, and that’s just what this was – a conversation.

Thanks in part to an interview process where teammates took time to get to know me, onboarding was as smooth as I’ve ever experienced. I showed up on my first day with my equipment and access squared away thanks to well-documented notes in Notion, a designated “buddy” to field my questions, and an internally-built AI assistant called “Clippy” to search through RapDev documentation when prompted. Help was a shoulder tap or Slack message away. In fact, when I needed a headset, it was the founder, Tameem, who retrieved AirPods for me.  Before I knew it, I was accepted as a member of the team, on equal footing with everyone else, despite my short tenure.

This has been my RapDev journey thus far, and I’m looking forward to the shared challenges ahead of us. What about you? Are you looking for your next role? Are you looking for something real in a world of slop? Check us out!