My steps to WorkStep: A story of staying the course 

Welcome to our February edition of “My Steps to WorkStep.” Each month we feature a member of the WorkStep team and dive into their role and what led them to it, tips for applicants, and a fun fact about them.

This month we talked to Chris Barmonde, one of our Senior Software Engineers, whose remote office is in Las Vegas, to get a better understanding of what life is like as an engineer at WorkStep. He reflects on being drawn to WorkStep’s product because it solves real-world problems and helps people.

What is your role at WorkStep?

I am a Senior Software Engineer at WorkStep. My responsibilities include writing all the code that makes the product site work, mentoring some of our other engineers, and basically making sure that the site is up and running and getting new features out.

I was one of the first engineers hired, so I’ve been here for four and half years, so almost anything that is on the site I’ve worked on in some way, shape, or form.

What is your typical workday like?

We start every morning with an engineer stand up where we detail what we’ve been working on and what we’re going to do over the course of the day. Then from there it’s just working on projects, new features, bugs, and anything that comes in.

I help anyone who has any questions. I’m pretty active in our product channels in Slack whenever other teams have issues that come up and try to solve their problems or answer any questions they have.

What was your path to this role like?

I worked with Dan and Justin, our co-founders at InstaEDU, then acquired by Chegg. I knew  they would reach out once Dan developed the next new thing. I wasn’t really anticipating joining the team, but I took the call because I liked them and was being nice, but I was very happy at my job.

But once they told me about what the product was, it was just very un-Silicon Valley. It wasn’t just making stuff for rich people, it’s solving a real problem that real people have on both sides of the market in terms of companies needing to hire folks, and folks who need jobs and want to stay in good jobs. It was just such an interesting product and a world I had never thought of. That, combined with the team, Justin and Dan – I just really wanted to work with them again.

Do you have any tips for aspiring WorkSteppers?

Just be open, honest, and curious. Don’t be afraid to say stuff. One of our original core values was to question the status quo.

I think everyone we’ve ever hired here has been interested in answering questions from new people. The biggest thing with new people who come into WorkStep is that they bring in that new perspective.

For someone like me who has been here for four and a half years, it’s very easy to be entrenched in old ideals, in the sense that you sometimes start to take things for granted. You often internalize so much of what you do that you’re not often looking at it from another angle. And that really is what bringing in new folks is all about, getting those new experiences and new ways to look at things – challenging the status quo.

What is something people may not know about you?

I’m very big into music. I own like 1,200 vinyl records. I’m a very big vinyl record collector. It’s bad. I only started a few years ago and it started as, “Oh, I’m only going to buy my favorite records,” completely ignoring the fact that I’ve had favorite records for like 30 years now, so that’s a lot of records. 

What advice would you give to your past self?

Honestly, stay the course. Everything happens for a reason. My career has been full of lots and lots of coincidences. I would never have worked with Dan and Justin previously if it hadn’t been for a bunch of coincidences.

An old co-worker who had been laid off reached out to me after I quit my old job and I told her I was not interested at all, but she thought she was going to get a referral fee, so she kept pushing it. So I finally was like, “Fine, I’ll interview, but I don’t think I’m going to be the right fit here.” But here we are, however many years later. She didn’t get a referral fee, but I did get a really long career, so I guess it all worked out.

What do you enjoy the most about being a WorkStepper?

The culture and the people. It certainly is different this year compared to a year ago. This time last year we had maybe a dozen employees, and I knew everyone across the company across all the different areas that people work on.

I certainly miss those days of being a super small team and working directly together, but as our engineering team and our product team continue to grow we’ve brought in people who still have those values, who are very open-minded and aren’t afraid to learn and grow. They just continue to be better and better in their jobs and work to build better and better products for our clients.

We are hiring

If you would be interested in learning more about open job opportunities at WorkStep, please visit our careers page. We’d love to hear from you!