This is a blog I wrote about my experiences working for Inktank on 10/4/2012! You can see the actual copy here: http://www.inktank.com/culture/from-inkling-to-inktank/
When I started at Inktank in January 2012, I was employee number 12 and only the fourth manager in the company. Since then, we have been on a sprint up a steep mountain to find the best talent for every part of our business. In just 9 months we have grown the company into a thriving organization with 45 individuals, with another half-dozen pending!
While it is often difficult to find the bleeding-edge talent for any new spin off, it has been an incredible pleasure to find people for Inktank. The reason being is that when engineers hear of Ceph, a completely open-source, distributed, unified storage system that provides object, block and file system storage that also runs on commodity hardware, they can immediately see the layers of interesting projects on which they will work and the amazing opportunity they will have.When business development managers hear that customers are often times demanding support and services rather than having to be cold called and hard sold, they jump at the chance to work here. We have been also expanding our marketing, community and professional services teams to be able to offer comprehensive support, exposure and outreach for Ceph and Inktank.
While our teams have been growing rapidly there has always been a steady stream of referrals. New employees, having only worked weeks or even days have referred their most trusted friends and colleagues to work for Inktank. The quality of candidates that we interview has been top-notch and we remain committed to continue the trend. We are very focused on hiring the best often time from some of the best educational institutions including nearby Harvey Mudd College and to that effect have several PhDs working on our teams.
The thing that people may not realize before they interview, is that while we are a spin-off which that can mean uncertainty and doubt for some when looking for a stable position; we are directly supported by a very sound and profitable web hosting company called DreamHost! In that light, we enjoy many of the perks and benefits of a large organization while retaining the start-up feel.
DreamHost enables us to give our employees full paid medical, dental, and vision benefits with nothing out of their pocket for premiums for the entire family, a very good matching 401k plan, significant stock options, free web hosting, twice weekly catered lunches (if you’re in our downtown Los Angeles headquarters), and many, many other advantages. Many are surprised at how democratized, laid back, and dedicated our employees are overall due to the prevailing company culture. We wear shorts and t-shirts to the office, play ping-pong in the kitchen, eat fully-stocked snacks 24/7 and work practically any hours as long as we get our work done!
We are still, and in the foreseeable future, continuing to hire talent throughout our organization. We are always looking for strong technical consultants to work in the professional services organization, quality assurance engineers to work with engineering, and developers who love to work with file systems and storage. I can now say that while we are still running up that ever-present mountain at a dead sprint, the foundation of the amazing executive management we have hired and the awesome technical staff already employed, we are definitely on our way to become what we have been saying all along – The Future of Storage!
Regardless if you see a position listed on our careers page or not, reach out to me to be considered if you are interested and experienced in our domain. The worst thing that can happen is that I’ll be completely upset that you have taken the time and effort to send a well put together resume…ha! Of course not, there is nothing to lose to email your resume to me (ilya.bolotin@inktank.com), so why not do it?!
@Pipogo