Frontend Engineer At Stitch Fix, Talks Road To Leadership
Ben Ilegbodu is the Principal Frontend Engineer at Stitch Fix. He is a web development expert with a passion for teaching others in the industry through his educational platform. Formerly serving as the Frontend Engineer at Eventbrite, Ben has had an impressive road to leadership.
Career Journey
Can you share an overview of what you do at Stitch Fix? Projects you and your team are working on?
At Stitch Fix, I work on the Platform team within our Customer Facing Engineering division. Instead of working on direct features for the website, our team creates tooling and capabilities that allow Features teams to focus on delivering functionality for our users. That way they don’t have to spend time on all the little things needed to make a site usable and performant.
Specifically, I work on our React component library that teams use to make building their features faster, on-brand, and accessible. I’m also working on a lot of tooling infrastructure to help teams monitor the performance of their web applications and make them even faster.
How would you describe your journey to leadership?
My leadership journey was totally not how I expected it would be. When I started, the only real path to leadership was management, so I told myself “in five years, you will be a manager.” Well, in five years, I wasn’t a manager, nor did I want to be. Instead, I found myself in technical leadership. Five years into my first job, I had built a lot of our frontend code. So I found myself teaching others how to use our internal framework and web development in general. It’s then that I knew I wanted to pursue a different path in leadership.
“It’s much easier to lead when those that I’m leading respect me. It’s much easier for them to respect me when they view me as someone they can learn and grow from.”
What do you think is a key ingredient to being a successful engineering leader?
One part is empathy. Trying to understand the feelings of those that I’m leading is key. Because from there comes humility and servant leadership. It’s not about me but ensuring the success of those that I’m leading. Because if they are successful, I’m also successful.
Along with that is technical excellence. I try to continue to grow in technical expertise in my domain areas so that I can continue to be that technical resource that others seek out. It’s much easier to lead when those that I’m leading respect me. It’s much easier for them to respect me when they view me as someone they can learn and grow from.
Technical Development and Growth
You have hosted over 150 talks/workshops (wow!) - what motivates you to teach others in the industry?
I really do love seeing folks get excited by something that I’ve taught and seeing them grow in their careers. I learned from others so I want to do the same. Giving talks and workshops have enabled me to travel all over the world from Sydney to Hawaii to Omaha, Nebraska. Also, teaching in public has opened up other career opportunities. So I would love to say that the motivation is 100% out of the goodness of my heart, but honestly, it’s been mutually beneficial.
What is one of your favorite resources for technical development?
A lot of my learning comes from debugging. If I have a problem and I’m unable to figure it out, I do the usual googling to find the answer. The biggest growth opportunities have come when I haven’t been able to find the answer, and I have to somehow figure out a solution on my own.
Sometimes, I’m unable to figure it out and I sadly have to move on. When I’m able to figure it out, I don’t stop there. This becomes a blog post or a conference talk because usually others have had the same problem. And in order to do either of those, I have to really research and understand what the problem was and why my solution fixed it. In those times, the journey was rough, but when I look back, I’ve grown a lot technically in that area.
Remote Work/Well-Being
How has the transition to remote work been for you?
Stitch Fix is a remote-friendly company with about 50% of Engineering working remotely before COVID. I was a few months into working at Stitch Fix when COVID hit, so I was already in a pretty good groove working remotely. Personally, I’ve really enjoyed remote working because I’ve cut out roughly 2.5 hours of commuting in my day. Since many of my co-workers were also remote, we already had a great culture of working remotely.
Now more than ever our work and personal lives are intertwined. How do you maintain a work/life balance?
My family basically forces work/life balance, which is great. My girls will come into my office and tell me it’s lunchtime or dinnertime and will not leave unless I come with them. I switched to a remote role primarily to have more time with my family so I don’t usually pass up these opportunities in order for “30 more minutes.”
Work/life balance is also modeled by my manager and co-workers as well, so I’m not in the situation where I’m eating with my family and everyone is still working. I don’t have to decide between work and my life once work time is over.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
What advice do you have for engineers that want to build an inclusive engineering culture? What does that mean to you?
As we’ve seen, inclusion doesn’t come naturally, unfortunately. There are many different people who have been excluded for many different reasons. In order to build an inclusive engineering culture, there needs to be a lot of intentionality in the process in the beginning. I’m always asking myself “is this meeting primarily one gender?” or “is this decision-making group primarily one race?” And if the answer is yes, we need to be intentional about including those that are currently being excluded.
“I’m always asking myself “is this meeting primarily one gender?” or “is this decision-making group primarily one race?” And if the answer is yes, we need to be intentional about including those that are currently being excluded.”
During these challenging times, what is something employers can do to better support their employees?
Employers can step out of their comfort zones and ask how they can better support their employees. I can suggest things that would make me feel better supported, but I’m not their employees. Taking the time to ask will show to employees that you actually care and that the employer isn’t doing it for PR or because they “have to.” Also, if they actually follow-up on the feedback, their employees will actually be better supported! :)
When it comes to recruiting engineers from different backgrounds, what do companies get right? What do they get wrong?
I’ve heard feedback in interview debriefs that the person from a different background “thought differently than they expected.” The way they approach the problem or tried to get to a solution was different than how people “normally” approach it. In my opinion, the companies that embrace and welcome those differences get it right and those that see it as a negative get it wrong.
Outside of Work
What do you like to do outside of work?
My favorite pastime is basketball - watching and playing. Since the pandemic, I haven’t been able to play, so it’s been only watching. I’m also spending A LOT of time with my family.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with ModelExpand readers?
Diversity is going to feel uncomfortable - even for me and I’m in the “diverse” demographic. I’ve seen time and time again when I’ve been in companies, organizations, or groups that have embraced diversity how those differences ended up making the company, organization, or group more successful in achieving our goals.
ModelExpand: ModelExpand is an inclusive recruiting strategy firm that helps companies build diverse and inclusive workplaces through strategic consulting, workshops, and events. Join our upcoming Inclusive Recruiting Bootcamp series that begins on October 23 to learn how to adjust key parts of the hiring process in order to build a more diverse talent pipeline. Learn more about our services HERE.
