New Employees Love Hack the Sheet

Another successful Hack the Sheet has sailed into the Smartsheet history books. A record number of teams produced impressive projects ranging from general performance enhancements to the Smartsheet application, to building better tools for our Quality Assurance team, to experimenting with new ideas for future product features. 142 participants across 28 teams hacked during this round of the hackathon.

For some of Smartsheet's newest team members Hack the Sheet was an opportunity to get ramped up and connect with their team. Liz Leong, Software Development Engineer, is a recent addition to the Solutions team. As a whole, the Solutions team is one of the newest in the Engineering organization - with most of its members coming together within the last few weeks.

So, rather than split up across other teams, Solutions used Hack the Sheet to get set up and bond as a team, while delivering a proof-of-concept application at the end of the week.

"It was way too fun to get paid for," Liz said of her first Hack the Sheet experience. "It was a good chance to gel, and collaborate with our new team. It was a good chance to learn the tech we're using."

While the Solutions team was getting to know each other, Jorge Contreras, Software Development Engineer and another first-time Hack the Sheet participant, was having a more traditional hackathon experience. Jorge worked on a project that focused on providing general performance enhancements to the Smartsheet web application. While he normally works on the Connectors team building integrations with other applications, Jorge's hack-team consisted of members of the Core, Integrations and Revenue teams.

"You end up in a team from different departments, talent, expertise, and you get to be creative and build something with a small deadline," Jorge said. "I liked the challenge of having a relatively small deadline because it forces you to plan accordingly while also having the flexibility to adapt to changes, and forces you to ask questions when you need help."

That short timeline worked to Jorge's teams advantage, as they were able to impress the hackathon judges. By the end of the week they received the "Mission Impossible" award for their efforts.

If you would like the chance to work on projects that are important to you, Smartsheet is hiring! Check out our available openings on our careers page.