変化に適応し、困難に立ち向かう。多国籍なエンジニアチームにとってのチャレンジとは

WealthParkでは、毎月月初の全社会議の場で、前月の活躍社員をAwardという形で表彰しています。

5つの行動指針（これを私たちはBehavior Identityと呼んでいます）に基づいて、それに相応しい成果を残した社員を部長/VPがノミネートし、表彰することで行動指針の定着化を促すことが狙いですが、それ以上に活躍した従業員をみんなで称賛する、という文化にも繋がっています。

※WealthParkにとってのBehavior Identityがどういったものなのかについては、noteでも細かく説明しているので、是非ご覧ください。

このインタビューでは、Awardで選出されるに至った従業員が日々、どういう想いで顧客、仕事仲間、自分自身と向き合い仕事をしているのかをお伝えしていきたいと思います。2021年最初のAwardを飾ったのは、"Best of Commit to Results"として、Engineer部門のチーム表彰になりました。非常にチャレンジングなパフォーマンスイシューに対する取り組みと成果が評価され今回の表彰に至りました。チームを代表してBackend engineerのDavidさんにコメントを頂きました。（今回は英語でお届けします）

ー Please tell us how you felt when you received the award and what did you think when you received the comment from VP of Engineering?

I was initially surprised. I did not expect our changes to be talked about much outside of the engineering and product teams since our work was focusing on technical improvements. I was happy we were able to receive recognition, especially since a lot of the work the backend and SRE teams do is not always visible outside of engineering. Our team has put a lot of work into these improvements.

ー What kind of achievements or daily actions do you think led to this award?

I cannot speak for the other members that received the award, but I personally do not think I did anything special! I just saw a problem that needed to be addressed, and focused on finding a way to fix it.
I am happy that at WealthPark we have the flexibility and freedom to be able to take time to work on these kind of important improvement opportunities, even if they are not always connected to our current projects. This is definitely a main contributor to our success!

ー What kind of challenges did you face and how did you overcome them?

Without going into details, there are always technical issues and design aspects we need to think about when developing, and we really need to make sure our designs work in all situations, not just the optimal 99% of cases. The hardest part is finding a solution that has the performance improvement you want, works in all cases, and also manages to avoid changing how the application currently works. I think that was the hardest part for my task.

ー How has the engineering team changed compared to when you first joined the company?

We have changed a lot since I first joined! When I started here I think we maybe had around 8 developers, but I think we are close to having triple those numbers at this point. As teams grow, so does the complexity of organizing projects and communicating changes among team members, but I think we are doing a great job adapting to the increase.
One big difference is that initially, many of our team members had to wear a lot of hats, but I think now that we have grown, everyone is able to kind of get into their preferred spaces and focus their work on the areas that they are really interested in.
Overall our team feels more developed and defined, but we still have freedom in how we develop things, and I feel that everyone has autonomy and a voice here. Another aspect I like about the increase in members is that we all have fairly different backgrounds, and that gives us a lot of opportunity to share knowledge and bounce ideas off of each other. I think one of our biggest strengths is that when someone is having trouble deciding on how to proceed with a project, everyone is more than willing to listen and help them find a good solution.

ー What is Behavior Identity "Commit to Results" for you?

For me, "Commit to Results" means to find ways of making something happen, regardless of the difficulties involved. I think that for us on the engineering team, many of the behavior identity aspects are closely linked, because the decisions we make often have long-lasting (or even permanent) consequences. For example, I feel that the combination of "Go Beyond" and "Commit to Results" follows my development philosophy of not just making something that works for the current situation, but putting in that extra effort to make sure the thing you built is reliable and can adapt to future changes and requirements.
It is extremely rare for a piece of software to be "done". It is constantly being changed so it can fit in its constantly-shifting environment. So for me, "Go Beyond" and "Commit to Results" are a good reminder to keep the future in mind, not just the next goal.

ー Congratulations on this award!!

最後に、Davidさんが所属するEngineer部門では一緒に働く仲間を大絶賛募集しています。是非、興味をお持ちいただいた方、エントリーお待ちしています！