Q&A With Buildium, a RealPage Company Employees

Be a sponge. You will be given a lot of information in a short amount of time. You will be prepared and ready for things that you wouldn't think you'd be able to do. Ask a lot of questions and never stop asking. Seek out answers using all available resources. Expect a friendly, supportive atmosphere like you've never experienced before, take advantage of it.

Learn the product, learn the customer experience, then learn the product some more. Our product is expansive and domain-specific, and customer empathy is serious business here. So it helps to wade in right away!

Honestly technological change moves fairly slowly, though it's been getting steadily better over time. There's a certain conservatism to the projects we take on.

Very. They strive to be at the top of the game.

There are as of recently three check-in points, I think promotions CAN happen at any of those, but one of those check-ins is an annual review in July after which raises happen, and most promotions happen then.

Empathy, personal organization, initiative, communicative-ness.

Could use an air hockey table.

I received a ton of support from the more established engineers. I did have to poll for it (ie asking a lot of questions), but everyone was always happy to drop everything and help. I've been here a while and I think the mentorship process for new hires is even more robust now.

Flexible - it's preferable to be in the office and in theory you need to ask your manager before working from home, but in practice I've never had difficulty doing it if I needed to, even on short noticed.

Most interns are pulled in from coding bootcamps in the area that we have a relationship with. The intern will be embedded on a team and will be writing production code, with a lot of support and mentorship from their team lead. At the end of a trial period, there may be an offer to come onboard fulltime as a junior engineer.

I've never had a serious HR issue - any difficulties I've had have been taken up with the person in question or in dire straits with a manager. Usually the effort is to talk things out in a direct way, unless for some reason you don't feel safe/comfortable doing that.

There are scorecards with the core competencies at each level of engineering, along with measurements of how well you live our core values. That sounds fairly regimented, but it ends up being part of a holistic discussion with your manager where they ask you to think seriously about your goals, then come up with specific ways to move towards them that you will then be assessed on.

Collaboration and communication, ability to see the big picture and put the business first, radical candor, and of course being a solid engineer. Ideally you should be able to break down work and design projects, in addition to just being able to code to the ticket in front of you.

We haven't had a lot of layoffs per se, but the people who have been exited seemed like they did so in a quiet and respectful manner. There are improvement plans that get implemented before anyone is laid off outright, so there's a chance to avoid it.

They're great! Engineering leadership is very thoughtful about building out career paths for people, and they reward good work and attitudes. There's room to move up in a more architectural or people management focus, depending on your preferences and skills, and your managers will work with you to achieve your goals.

I have yet to see any actual layoffs. All departures tend to be quiet and quick. If anything, we're sometimes frustrated by just how quiet they are, but it's better than the opposite problem.

For some team members, it's definitely vague what your next career step is going to be, and I've definitely heard frustration from employees on that front, especially in customer care and BDR roles. This is somewhat understandable because it's still a small enough company that there isn't a huge organizational infrastructure for you to step through. On the flip side, they've made a conscious effort to get a career path in front of every employee, and they have a history of hiring internally across departments. The entry-level positions are often heavily customer-facing and involve learning a lot about the product quickly, and those two skills are highly valued for positions across Sales, Marketing, Product, etc. Additionally, I have also seen new specialized positions get created with an internal hire in mind to enable someone to lean into their strengths. Last, Buildium has been growing steadily for years, and that's meant good things for career development.

They use a variety of reporting on statistics related to an agent’s performance: average call time, average hold time, customer satisfaction score, and so on. Agents who perform well are able to grow into other roles within the department, from specialist to expert, to lead.

Buildium gives "unlimited" PTO, but it is typically restricted to about 5 weeks per year.