Welcome to Behind the Flame, a series created to showcase our incidentios.
Meet Tom Petty, Product Designer here at incident.io.
Q: What has been your favorite incident.io memory so far?
My favorite incident.io memory so far is probably when we received the digital folder of pager alerts from our VC investors The Chain Smokers. My favorite is the “Womp Womp” version, which isn’t your typical on-call alert sound.
Q: What is the value that most resonates with you?
Make it Magic as a designer and working in tech and I think soft words like “creativity” are often overlooked sometimes, but there's value in bringing creativity to things that others might overlook. There's magic to it.
Q: What is your favorite benefit?
The first Friday of the month, it’s a chance for everyone to reset ready for the next Monday.
Q: What is your favorite Slack channel?
My favorite Slack channel is #wins because we get to see all of the new customers and logos the Sales team have worked extremely hard on.
Q: What advice would you give to yourself on your first day?
The advice I would give myself on the first day would be to start from the product, learn the product, and learn it inside and out, use it and then work backwards from there. I would also suggest learning how to use the espresso machine quickly because you look stupid if you ask for help after six months.
Q: What advice would you give to candidates interviewing?
If you're a designer and you're interviewing with us, I would definitely say show us real work that is shipped in the world. Something that's made it out and is full of warts and compromises is so much more interesting than something that has been thought up in a perfectly sealed lab. We want to be able to discuss with you the journey you went on to come up with those specific design choices and how you have found it out in the world.
Q: How would you describe the culture in three words?
I would describe our culture as fast-paced, which is probably two words in itself, focused and irreverent.
Q: Which incident.io employee would you want to be stuck in a lift with?
There are two employees that I would like to be stuck in a lift with. One is our founder Pete Hamilton, as I suspect he could probably fix it, or at least think he could. The other person would be Eva Camus-Smith (Head of Legal), because I suspect she could sue the lift manufacturer.
Q:What does last Friday of the month mean to you?
Friday of the month means I can decompress from the month and enjoy some peace and quiet before jumping back in on the Monday.
Q: What are you most looking forward to with incident.io this year and beyond?
This year I'm most looking forward to pushing into the world of AI and we're doing a lot there. I'm on the team that's working on that and I'm really excited to learn how to design an AI interface as well as just see what we can build with it
Q: What is something that you are excited or proud to have worked on?
I like hearing feedback about how people are having a nice time when they're on call when it can be really painful. The incident.io app is something that I worked on as my first project here and so I'm glad that it can make the experience of waking up in the freezing cold at 2 am a little bit easier for people.
Q: What is it like being part of the Design team?
Being on the Design team at incident.io is interesting. There are only three of us and there are a lot of people who aren't designers so you get very good at juggling plates. But what I like about it is that everyone is a generalist. We work on the product but you're also expected to work on the website, on the brand, an event, a podcast, a conference, anything like that is something that could pop up at any time. It definitely brings a lot of variety to the role.
Q: How does the Design team collaborate with other teams?
It doesn’t feel like collaboration a lot of the time, it just feels like normal conversations because there is no barrier between any team and so whether it's building a design from Figma or cooking up a kind of secret swag project for Christmas or just some slides because someone's got a customer meeting and they want it to look extra good. All of those things pop up and it's just literally a case of either a Slack message or two or sitting next to someone half the time. It doesn't feel like collaboration, it's just chatting with people you know.
Q: What is something that surprised you when you joined?
One thing that surprised me when I joined was how much there is to incident.io. I came in thinking there was a Slack channel and that you manage things in it and the next thing you know there's workflows and catalog and actions and all these things that I had no idea what they were. The level of sophistication and customization, I had no idea I was signing up to work on that.
Q: If you were to join another team for the day, what team would you join and why?
I would work in sales because I want the commission.
Q: Why do you think companies need a reliable incident management tool?
Sh*t's going to go wrong and when it does you want to be able to deal with it correctly and properly. Because dealing with the incident properly can actually work out better for you and the company rather than if nothing had happened at all.
