Sumo Logic Blog

While there is no outward sign of it, Sumo Towers (605 Castro) is not a building for the faint of heart.

The ground floor is where we devs have relegated all our ‘evil, as they can pull off wearing a suit without looking like poseurs’ salespeople and marketing staff. It lulls you into a false sense of security – surely, you tell yourself, this is just an office like any other. The door to Amnesty is closed, after all, so how are you to know that it is our own version of Las Vegas? What happens in Amnesty…

The stairwell leading up to the second floor – The Realm of the Devs – does not have any signs saying “Abandon Hope, all ye who enter here” or even “Beware the leopard,” but just the gentle admonishment, “Employees Only.”

It opens onto a bright and open area, with many desks, each covered in monitors – where there had initially been dark twisty passages, and poor lighting, there is now a large room, with delicate (and in fact slightly load-bearing) pillars, painted with strips of steel blue, grey and white. The result of an intense period of bashing through walls, which this particular sumo is saddened to have missed – after all, when is swinging around a sledgehammer not fun?

There is an almost overwhelming feeling of ‘quiet.’ The soft sounds of the clacking of keyboard keys, the hum of music seeping through oversized headphones.

This quiet has misled many a visitor - after all, it is only occasionally punctuated with violent thrashings as the writer is either struck by a blinding flash of inspiration or finally, woefully, temporarily beaten down, expressing a wordless Hulk-ism with the well-known and recognized Keyboard SMASH.

But of course, all in the room know that the keyboard smash is a call to arms! Foam bats are produced, from their easily accessible but very discrete spots, lined up against innocent-seeming shelves and desk frames.

The artillery units have been gathering their ammo since the last battle – in the form of railing angry birds or squirrels, or soft squishy sumos – and their eyes dart around, arms launching missiles with barely a pause and which, after a few years of practice, often strike true.

The rubber band guns, bought on a whim at a crafts festival on Castro, have devolved into diversions versus actual weapons – the rubber bands long since lost to the chaos of previous wars, they still cause the rampaging hordes to pause in their slaughter, which is often enough to turn the tide of any war.

As with any hands on battle, there are the berserkers – huge hulking wielders of destruction. Fortunately for sumo, and for the monitors and coffee mugs, there is only one Panda. Sumo Towers quite literally trembles at his commands (and jumps) and none are safe when he is released – friend and foe alike are subject to his violent whims, and allegiances last no longer than the time it takes to acknowledge them.

The battle rages on – has it really only been a few minutes?? – and the few remaining innocent bystanders get to a half-crouch out of their seats, and indecision flows over their faces… To enter the fray, or hope that the collateral damage will exclude them. Too late, they discover what all the combatants already knew – When Sumos War, Nowhere is Safe.

This battle is made safer in the knowledge that David, our Platform team manager, has left his sigil of authority at home – as is appropriate for wrangling such a motley crew, on his promotion he was presented with a bright pink riding crop – its purpose  (either punishment or motivation) truly depends on the particular quirks of developer it’s wielded against.

True personalities are revealed – the quiet and gentle Yan shows his inner not-so-secret maniacal genius; Krimy is normally a quiet and gentle UI dev – but when the battle heats she is the first to jump right into the thick of it, releasing angry birds with equally angry battle cries; Joan attacks with an aggressive rapier-like bat style, squawking to punctuate each successful hit; Yong plays the puppet master, the devil on a shoulder, whispering evil suggestions to all who are weak to his words. This author herself, who is obviously of a generally delicate and shy character, will rally to defend herself against the injustices of the ‘evil jerks’ that cannot resist taunting her with their longer reach.

And all at once, with a synchronization that belies the close familiarity of these particular warriors, weapons are lowered. A few manic giggles escape, and there is a brief pause as everyone silently acknowledges that ‘I just won,’ and compares battle scars.

The quiet that follows is similar to that from before the fight in only the most superficial ways – the focus which had been slowly drifting returns, and the programmers-turned-warriors revert to their more usual selves, and all that can be heard is the soft clacking of keyboard keys, with renewed purpose and enthusiasm.

Forbes.com recently published an article with a catchy headline that stated recruiters agree the interview process boils down to three questions:

1. Can you do the job?

2. Will you love the job?

3. Can we tolerate working with you?

A lot of people have been weighing in on this article and most agree that it really is that simple. As the Head of Recruitment for Sumo Logic, I strongly believe that we have constructed an interview process for technical positions that answers to each of these questions, implicitly and explicitly.

1. Can You Do The Job?

Here at Sumo, technology is a key differentiator for us. Engineers here view coding as an art form. Clean, elegant code is the best way to prove to us in an interview that you can do the job. Raw intelligence and horsepower is necessary but not sufficient. We look for candidates that can perceive the larger context of decisions and trade-offs inherent in full system design.

Communication skills are essential in every job. If you can’t explain the projects you have been working on in your current and previous job, it is difficult for an interviewer to understand your contributions and value of the project. It is key for an engineer to be able to explain his previous projects during our interview process.

Emotional Intelligence (EI) has been a term I have been hearing more and more over the last few years with regards to key hires. EI is the “ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of oneself, of others, and of groups.” Hiring managers have been taking into account a candidate’s ability to be empathetic to their colleagues around them as candidates with a high EI tend to have a higher chance of fitting in with the culture and being a positive addition for our team.

In addition to performance in the interview, we like to see a track record of success. Success in previous role with relevant domain experience is one way to show this. An excellent academic record or great open source projects are a few others. We ensure that we draw on multiple data points to hire the best candidate, reduce attrition and not exclude candidates that do not have the “typical” background.

2. Will You Love The Job?

We give equity to our employees and this gives you the ability to own a portion of the company. We want to keep ownership of the company exclusive to people who know that Sumo Logic is going to be a wildly successful company and willing to work hard to get it there. From employees to board members, we want our whole team to be striving for a multi-billion dollar exit.

We currently run what some would describe as a EverybodyOps agile development process. We use a rotating PagerDuty scheme with a primary and secondary on call for a week long rotation. We use a a few tools, including Sumo Logic, to monitor and troubleshoot the service. This has been an opt-in system and every engineer that has joined our team has opted in. 

3. Can We Tolerate Working With You

Once you hang around the Sumo office long enough, you will realize that you could be in danger of being attacked by a Panda wielding a foam bat, Angry Birds, or flying stuffed squirrels while a public address system connected to our continuous integration server will intermittently alert you of who most recently broke the build (and on-demand funny .wav files). You will find people playing board games during lunch and video games and table tennis after.

We enjoy each other’s company and encourage one another to excel. In between the breakout sessions of fun, the team has been known to be dedicated to their work.  We believe in allowing flexible work hours… no one monitors you as long as your work is getting done although- it is still relatively common to walk into the office and see a few people burning the midnight oil.      

We work hard because we love our jobs and we are comfortable in our environment. Every day, lunch is catered. This means, we have to want to sit down next to you at lunch. Individuality is encouraged as we have a bit of a zany culture and we love to include everyone that joins the team (read: inducted into the Sumo family) to join us in our unofficial impromptu events like movie night, wine tasting, coffee breaks, and going to see concerts.

Our Hiring Process:

At Sumo Logic, our hiring process starts with an informational phone call with me. I help answer any questions about the role, organization etc. that I can.

When we are bringing a candidate on-site for an interview, we typically pair up two engineers at a time. This allows the interviewers to get multiple data points on each question and ease gaps in the in conversation.  We have multiple rounds of the pair interview to gain multiple data points and allow each interviewer the voice their opinion. The hiring manager makes the final decision but the team’s feedback is heavily considered.

When an engineer interviews, the questions are most commonly “here’s an input, here’s an output, write the function”. As you go through the process, you will also be asked open ended design, allowing the engineer to dig in as deep as they would like. We also ask about testing and full system design.

Of course, once we have answered the questions with three concrete Yes’s, the process flips as noted by commenter Beth Harte on the article. The candidate must evaluate us and answer three questions about the company:

1. Will you allow me to do my job? (Trust in letting someone do their job once hired)
2. Will you love that I love doing my job? (Respect that there is more to a job than a paycheck)
3. Can I tolerate working for you? (Corporate culture affects both parties)

Looking for a job:

If you are a candidate that is looking for a job, your personal and professional networks are always going to be your best option. Many companies, including Sumo Logic, have an internal employee referral program and the best hires often come from that program. As a candidate, if you have any connection with a company, their customers or vendors, I suggest you leverage them to get your foot in the door.

Other options you can try to get your foot in the door are attending the company sponsored meetups or listen to talks given by employees and network with them at those events. Companies appreciate when a candidate shows genuine interest in the product, market, and technical challenges they are solving.

If you are working with a contingency recruiter, you’re simply going to have to prove yourself to be best candidate in the pool during the interview process.  Recruiters make typically 20% – 25% of a candidate’s base salary, which associates you to a $20k+ price tag the day you start working. If you’re that candidate, you don’t need to be merely as good as the rest of the candidate pool, but a cut above the rest.

Similarly, if you would like to work at Sumo Logic, we would love to hear from you. We have our jobs posted and I read every application that comes in. Feel free to send me an email directly at zack@sumologic.com.