July 15, 2023
Snoo
The sample character above is from Reddit and it is called Snoo (Reddit's avatar / mascot).
I began work at Reddit in November 2021 on a special project where our mission for a small team was to add a new dimension to a current feature / project.
The first week was a lot of onboarding meetings which were very friendly with a good ramp-up.
Also, instead of receiving random merchandise, they gave us credit for new employees to choose what kind of goodie we want.
I picked-up the same 4 Reddit T-shirts.
Remote: It was my first job fully remote (freelancer part excluded).
I was able to do my own schedule which was very flexible.
Usually during a sunny day and no meetings, I will go for a walk at the peak of the day with podcasts or thinking about the project and needs.
I went to the office once!
Tools: They used similar tools that tech companies use and also, there is one centralized dashboard very useful to find any information and questions (e.g. paycheck, setup).
Snooweek: Once or twice a year, new teams are created to work shortly on random projects. I only participated in one and it was amazing.
Automation: After one year working there, I received emails to get a hoodie, goodies and update.
There are also courses and training on various topics to always get up to date. Everything was automatic and very well defined.
Snoo summer event: In May 2022, we got a special event where they invited full time employees to New York.
I like New York and it was nice to see co-workers in person.
I posted pictures from this event on this previous blog post.
I was very impressed by the organization and how they setup all the hotels, transports and logistics for the amount of people.
std::exit
Last December, the main project that I worked on got deprioritized and my team splitted-up and got dispatched on multiple teams. After that, I worked on random projects with low priority. I suspected that it was about time before I stopped working with Reddit. So I stopped working at reddit last April and I went back to the gaming industry in June.
I hope Reddit will re-enable the main project and other projects that I worked on. I see a huge potential but probably not the good timing now. Who knows maybe in the next few years.
It was a nice experience where I met new friends and I'm still using Reddit everyday.
Even before working at reddit, while working and after that. I still don't understand why a specific company never acquired Reddit. I have the same pattern in mind about Microsoft with Visual Assist but it's another topic...
Big Thanks to Andrei and Charlie. Thanks to all friends / co-workers that I worked with!
[Tip of the post]
There is a lot of useful information on reddit (e.g. topic, comments).
With Google search, you can define a "site" to get only results from reddit website with specific keyword like that:
site:reddit.com coffee.
Thanks for reading,
JS.