A Delphix Engineer's Perspective On Recruiting

When I joined Delphix a year and a half ago as a full-time software engineer, I did so for a number of reasons. I thought Delphix had the highest concentration of smart and passionate people I could find. I liked the idea of working on a variety of topics and owning the projects I built. I was happy to see that the people here were friends in and out of work. I thought it would be interesting to watch the company grow before my eyes.

Most importantly, I knew that Delphix would allow me to grow faster and in more ways than any other company I had talked to. As the first alumni of Rice University to join Delphix, I naturally got involved in recruiting soon after coming on board. I saw it as a great way to help both my new company by finding smart students to join the team, and my alma mater by increasing student awareness of great post-graduate options besides the tech giants.

Getting to see recruiting from the other side helped me understand how much work goes into making the process at Delphix a different and positive experience for students, and I want to share some of that with students going through that process today.

Three years of Rice alumni at Delphix

It didn't take long for Delphix to stand out to me during my interview process. With a lot of recruiters at a lot of other companies, I felt that I got too much of a "used car salesman" vibe. Recruiters would be just a little too friendly, just a little too flattering, and I worried that they didn't have my best interests in mind. This was alarming: I was a young student trying to make a very big decision about how to start the next stage of my life and my career, and some of the people giving me advice didn't seem to care about any of that. This was not the case at Delphix.

From the start to the end I was impressed with how straightforward, honest, and upfront my whole interviewing process was. I didn't feel that I was being tricked or smooth-talked into accepting, instead Delphix laid out why they thought I was a good fit and what I could look forward to working on. That sort of openness and honesty was incredibly refreshing, and those values are upheld by I and everyone involved in recruiting at Delphix.

Even better, that level of integrity is upheld by every part of the company. I think one of the unique things about Delphix recruiting is just how involved engineers are, particularly new grads who have recently joined Delphix. In total, we have exactly one person in charge of coordinating university outreach. One. That's it. Given the number of schools Delphix visits, the number of tech talks we give, the number of interviews we host, one just isn't enough.

Fortunately, this gives interested engineers the chance to really get involved in the process and help out. This is great news for students considering Delphix. Most of the Delphix people you talk to at career fairs, at tech talks, or in interviews were in your exact position at most a year or two ago. Sometimes just months ago. They've volunteered to be there not because it's their job, not because they get a commission, but purely because they're excited to be at Delphix, they want to share that excitement with you, and they want to find other young, smart engineers to work and learn alongside.

Elizabeth Liu interned at Delphix last summer from Rice U

She first heard about Delphix at a tech talk hosted by Delphix engineers. When talking to students about joining Delphix, we also tend to place an unusual amount of emphasis on cultural fit. That's not something I ever heard about from other companies. Does this student share a lot of the same values as Delphix around engineering quality and ownership? Are they easy to talk to? Is there something at Delphix they would be interested in and passionate about? Could I sit next to this person for 40 hours a week and enjoy that time?

While it's important to find good software engineers, it is equally challenging and important to find people that mesh well and help to create the kind of environment at Delphix that I want to be a part of. We have this great expression at Delphix that I strongly believe in: every person who joins Delphix should be smarter than the last.

Considering I've been at Delphix for a while now I'm not sure what that says about me, but it does mean that as a full-time engineer and as a seemingly part-time recruiter I'm lucky to have the chance to talk to smarter, more interesting, and more passionate students all the time. It's a big perk to be able to talk directly with students, and as part of that to talk about my own experiences in school and at Delphix.

For example, a few months ago I had the chance to speak to the Women in CS Club at Rice University, the CSters. Getting to hang around with the CSters to hear about their plans for the future and give my take on anything they were thinking about was a truly rewarding experience. Those kinds of experiences are the whole reason I and many of the engineers at Delphix are in the recruiting biz.

If you are interested in learning what Delphix has to offer, don't hesitate to send an e-mail to amanda.merriweather@delphix.com. If you have any questions or comments, or there's anything else you'd like to learn about engineering or recruiting at Delphix, you should also feel free to reach out to me directly at max@delphix.com.