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<\/p>\nAt WP Engine, we are guided and held accountable by our 5 core values: do the right thing, customer-inspired, where the best get better, built to last, and aspiring to lead: committed to giving back. As WP Engine employees, we always strive to make decisions with these values in mind. This way, we can continue to define and cultivate our company culture. By doing our part to ensure an enjoyable and fulfilling work environment, we are able to better deliver digital experiences for our customers.<\/p>\n
In this series, we highlight a WP Engine employee embodying those core values. “Aspiring to Lead: Committed to Giving Back” means we empower our team and ourselves to lead and participate in meaningful programs in our own communities. By engaging with our local communities, we can change lives and grow together. Mike Angstadt, Sr. Manager of Engineering, has grown professionally at WP Engine and is now using his expertise to give back to WP Engine and the Austin community via the 2018 WP Engine Summer Intern Program and other organizations.<\/p>\n
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Sr. Engineering Manager, Core Platform – we build the managed hosting cloud platform for WordPress that is deployed to our ~8,300 instances at GCE and AWS. <\/span>My job is growing people, helping teams, and building enterprise technology that helps our customers win online in a scalable, highly available, secure, and performant way.<\/span><\/p>\n I wanted to learn how to build distributed systems at massive scale, at ~4 billion requests per day WP Engine has that scale in spades, and I wanted to do so at a company whose culture and values tightly aligned with my leadership style.<\/span><\/p>\n I began at WP Engine as an Engineer Manager for 1 scrum team, which quickly became 2, then 3. \u00a0Almost a year and a half later I\u2019ve had 2 fantastic Engineer Managers join my team and help\u00a0scale the Core Platform group to over 25 engineers in 5 scrum teams. \u00a0The only thing more impressive than our company\u2019s growth has been the growth of the individuals around me — every day our engineers invest in making themselves better.<\/span><\/p>\n The people. At WP Engine I\u2019ve had the luxury of working with some of the nicest, most talented, and intriguing people in my career. \u00a0We rally around tough problems, pick each other up when we\u2019re down, and advocate for our customers by living our core values.<\/span><\/p>\n Our CEO Heather Brunner constantly says, \u201cLeadership isn\u2019t position or title, it is action.\u201d \u00a0Every day the WP Engine family sets into action a ripple effect of community service, open-source contributions, and technological empowerment through education. \u00a0Whether it\u2019s submitting a bug fix for WordPress Core or volunteering at our local food bank; part of our culture is acknowledging the fortunate successes we\u2019ve had as a company and as individuals and spreading that around to our global community.<\/span><\/p>\n Myself and Sr. Director of Engineering Ryan Anderson led the 2018 program design & execution. \u00a0The program is crucial to R&D at WP Engine for a few important reasons: <\/span><\/p>\n 1.<\/span> Getting Paid to Learn – 3 questions every IC gets asked during their 1:1s in R&D at WP Engine: Are you learning? \u00a0Are you having fun? Are you prepared to bring a better engineer in the front door tomorrow? <\/span>Allowing interns the flexibility to explore their curiosities while aligning their enrichment material with content that makes them better at solving our tough problems at scale is a recipe for success. <\/span><\/p>\n 2.\u00a0<\/span>The Energy of Awe: \u00a0Increasing your engineering team by 12% with college students for 10 weeks injects a youthful energy that drives everyone. \u00a0The inquisitive nature of students seeking knowledge forces amazing things that help the entire team like a lead engineer unpacking the architecture a bit more during backlog refinement, a manager answering a \u2018silly\u2019 question that 3 other people had, or giving a junior engineer their first shot at mentoring.<\/span><\/p>\n 3. Identify & Groom Top Talent Early: \u00a0In the last 2 years, we\u2019ve hired every graduating intern that was involved in our internship program. \u00a0The reason is simple, both the student and WP Engine get 10 weeks to de-risk the hiring decision. Why <\/span>wouldn\u2019t<\/span><\/i> we want to hire graduating students with talent, tenacity, and already know our stack?<\/span><\/p>\n This year\u2019s program started out with a single mission, Teach the participates in the software engineering they won\u2019t learn in computer science school. \u00a0<\/span>From there we expanded to provide an enrichment speaking track, embedded them into our scrum teams and assigned them meaningful work, sponsored an intern hackathon, and insisted they be held to the same automation, reliability, and quality standards we apply across the board for our full-time engineers. \u00a0We wanted to give them a 10-week preview of what it\u2019s like to be a real engineer and make sure they had an unbelievably positive & memorable experience.<\/span><\/p>\n For me, seeing the intrinsic motivation in action is always inspiring. \u00a0Whether it was drilling down into problems to find the best answer, self-starting on team lunches, or editing their final presentation video — the amount of talent, aptitude, and \u201cget it done\u201d energy they brought to the teams was fantastic! \u00a0They were fearless and inspiring.<\/span><\/p>\nWhat brought you to WP Engine? <\/b><\/h3>\n
How has your career evolved since starting at WP Engine?<\/b><\/h3>\n
What is your favorite thing about working here? <\/b><\/h3>\n
What does Aspiring to Lead: Committed To Giving Back mean to you?<\/b><\/h3>\n
What is your role in the WP Engine R&D summer intern program? Why do you think the program is important for the individuals involved as well as for WP Engine as a company? <\/b><\/h3>\n
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What are the goals of the program? <\/b><\/h3>\n
What have been your favorite parts of the intern program?<\/b><\/h3>\n
What\u2019s the best career advice you have ever received?<\/b><\/h3>\n