Grant Kitching, Senior Manager of Vertical Sales, believes that daily collaboration among teams is the main driver of a high-performing, innovative sales team. One of the ways ShareFile supports this idea is through “scrums.” These daily meetings were originally a part of the agile development movement to ensure better product releases through tighter communication between developers, product managers and other key stakeholders. Every morning at ShareFile, Lead Generators, Sales Executives and Directors on vertical sales teams meet in “scrums” to discuss daily numbers and projections, competitors, or articles. This gives an open forum for team members to share best practices and hold one another accountable.

Anna Hwang, Senior Sales Manager, believes that our success lies in one of our core sales values “we are a family first and foremost.” We have an awesome culture at ShareFile, and everyone is encouraged to be a part of it. Most employees are friends in and outside the office, and she believes that gives us such a unified team spirit and energy. The sales team has a dedicated social committee that puts together corporate outings such as sports events, happy hours and intramural teams. With this sort of relationship, the team wants to see each other be successful.  Everyone is extremely competitive with one another but in an environment and culture that emphasizes sharing information and best practices to ensure everyone is at the top of their game.

While maintaining a high level of team collaboration is a key initiative here at ShareFile, Kendall Bradshaw, Inside Sales Manager, believes our focus on personal as well as career development is what makes the sales team so special. “We believe that the best way to grow a person professionally is to supplement career growth with personal development,” says Kendall. There are weekly classes and trainings for employees to improve organization, work-life balance or even daily health. Alongside this personal development, ShareFile provides unparalleled opportunities for career development. Every manager is extremely accessible, and during weekly pipeline meetings employees are encouraged to talk about their long-term vision and goals. Kendall herself was able to become a manager after starting as the youngest member of the sales team at ShareFile! With the explosive growth ShareFile is seeing, positions are opening up all across the board, and it is a key focus for managers to prepare internal employees to take them.

The main takeaway I had while interviewing these managers is that sales employees are extremely valued. The organization wants every salesperson to succeed and grow with the company. While interviewing Kendall, management had just ordered pizza for lunch for the entire team. If that doesn’t keep someone engaged, I don’t know what else does!

“This year, I resolve to find a stylish way to wear a hard hat. With all this exciting construction, I’m going to need one!” – Ashton Smith, Associate Project Manager

“Break my iPhone addiction. I live and breathe social 24/7. Wake up in the morning, scan Facebook newsfeed for any interesting updates. Brush teeth, check Twitter. Walk the dog, check in at the mail box on Foursquare. My resolution is to learn how to take a break sometimes, but only for short periods because I’ll have social withdrawals otherwise!” – Jennifer Smith, Marketing Specialist

“Go to an alpaca farm.” – Alex Hofford, Account Manager

“My resolution this year is to pay off my credit card debt.” – Alex Boyd, Associate Designer

“I am resolving to be more involved with family this year. Visit my grandparents more, take trips to see my cousins, and just generally make a better effort to involve them in my life and show I love them more often.” – Davis Litzenberger, Business Analyst

What are your new year’s resolutions for this year? How do you plan on making them happen? Share them with us below!

Sarah: Can you tell me a little about your job role and how it’s changed since you originally joined the ShareFile team?

Peter: I started at ShareFile as Director of Technology, managing development and technical operations. It was a pretty small operation – for the first few months, there was only one other engineer. We slowly added more developers, but since the Citrix acquisition our department has grown quickly. We now have thirty engineers devoted to ShareFile. I spend a lot less time working on development myself now, and I spend a lot more interacting with other teams like product management and customer support to determine how we can improve the ShareFile service.

Sarah: How has ShareFile development changed since the Citrix acquisition? Are there any new challenges for the development department now that ShareFile is part of a larger company?

Peter: We have access to so many more resources now, which makes it possible for us to take on more new projects than ever. In addition to growing our team, we work with many more really smart, talented people within other Citrix groups who have helped us out with new ideas and support. With a larger team, we are learning to specialize. A small team meant that everyone worked on a variety of product features and in many roles. Now that we have more people, each person can become an expert on a few things. It’s a better way to dedicate resources, but it can be a tough adjustment.

Sarah: What are you focusing on in development right now?

Peter: We want to make the ShareFile product even easier to work with right from the first time you use it. In line with Citrix’s mobile strategy, we recently refreshed the user interface of our mobile apps recently, and we learned a lot from that experience about simplifying the interface while still including all of functionality our users need. I’m looking forward to the opportunity to apply some of those lessons to the ShareFile web application.

Thanks, Peter! Check out the development team’s handiwork at the ShareFile web site.

Today I had the opportunity to interview Ian Hawkins, Web Developer here at ShareFile. One of his responsibilities is to bridge the gap between UI Design and Development.

Ian, tell me about your role at ShareFile.

My role at ShareFile began about one year ago with an internship. I was slicing images and generating basic landing pages.  Since then,  it has grown to include work with website redesign, work with internal apps, marketing banners, mobile platform design, and sales materials just to name a few.  Even though we are now over 100+ employees strong and growing fast, when I started there were only around 40 employees and I was forced to wear several different hats.  It was a great way to start my professional career and learn a lot of different skills in a short amount of time.

For those who have no idea what web development is, can you sum it up in just a few words?

Despite spending a large percentage of my time with graphic design and marketing tools, my primary role is web development.  In a nutshell, it consists of coding websites based off of graphical layouts and wireframes.  I frequently work with html, css, jquery and even a little c#.

What are some examples of your day-to-day tasks?

My day to day tasks always involve one common activity: coffee.  Post- caffeine, my tasks include a variety of cool things. One day I might be designing a marketing asset in Illustrator or Photoshop, and another day I might have my head down, coding a website with my headphones on to drown out the noise of our sometimes animated coworkers.

What is the best part of your job?

I really like the fact that my job may change from day to day and I get the opportunity to work with almost every department; whether it is marketing, sales, account management, development, or internal apps.  This variety really keeps things interesting and makes work fun.

What makes ShareFile the best place to work?

I would say ShareFile’s most redeeming quality is our culture.  We still have that startup charm and you wouldn’t be hard pressed to find someone playing video games, ping-pong, or riding by on a scooter.  The fun youthful atmosphere, combined with achieving amazing growth and success in our industry make for the perfect combination in a workplace.  I am very lucky to have landed here at ShareFile.