Do you feel supported in your career at Intuit?
Vishal Soni: 100 percent. When I started as an intern, I had limited experience and only knew a few things about a tech stack. I was honest about it to my manager and he was very supportive and said that I could enrol in online courses and university courses. The most surprising bit was that I could study during my office hours. This flexibility and support from my manager enabled me to enrol in many courses which really helped me to get up to speed.
Last year, I expressed my interest in building my skills in front-end technology and I was immensely supported in that journey. I also wanted to learn more about blockchain so was encouraged to reach out to the US team that does a lot of work on blockchain. The US team provided me with the training materials which gave me insights about blockchain and the Metaverse. So I’m very lucky that Intuit has all these technologies that we can play with.
Over the past year, I’ve also worked on various features of the QuickBooks software, delivering projects not only in Australia, but also for other countries – namely Singapore, Ireland, South Africa, France, the United States and the United Kingdom. Intuit has given me the opportunity to work on different code bases, alongside other teams and service customers around the world – that was something I have never experienced before in my career.
How are you finding the culture at Intuit?
Vishal Soni: The culture is very welcoming. When I first started as an intern, I didn’t know much about Intuit back then, but everyone made it so easy for me to reach out whenever I needed help with something. The hierarchy is also flat and transparent which gives me the opportunity to reach out to any leaders and share my ideas.
At its core, Intuit is very customer-obsessed, but another core business focus is its people. The culture we have at Intuit is based on trust and flexibility and you can see this across the entire business. We have the flexibility to start late, finish late or start early and finish early – as long as we get the job done. I like how managers don’t micromanage and are respectful of everyone’s ways of working.
I also feel that I can bring my own self to work. I don't have to change the way I dress or look to fit in. These are all small things but they add up to paint a broader picture of how inclusive and diverse the culture is at Intuit.
Earlier this year, Intuit rolled out a hybrid model, encouraging its people to alternate between working from home and from the office. For me, I love coming to the office so I’ve been coming in every day. But many of my colleagues have been working from home for a few days and coming to the office on our designated team days.
The flexibility of working also goes beyond time zones. I remember one of my teammates went to India to see family and was also able to work from there. India is five hours behind Sydney so he started work at 9am India time, which is like 2pm for us in Sydney.
You’re currently leading Intuit’s Accessibility program in Australia. Can you tell us more about this project?
Vishal Soni: When I first joined Intuit, I came across a project where we had to improve the accessibility of QuickBooks Online. As it was very new to me, I went ahead and did some training. That’s when I realised that Intuit has a huge global team of about 1,000 volunteer employees and 24 product leaders – called Intuit’s Accessibility and Inclusive Design team – that looks after how we build products, support customers and develop an inclusive workplace. Together, this team has embedded accessibility into our design requirements and code reviews, driving more than 550 product improvements in FY 2021 alone.
It wasn’t until I interviewed a customer with one of our accessibility candidates that I really wanted to volunteer and be more invested in this project. The candidate had some colour blindness and they were not able to see if the colour of our application was green. When I saw them use our product with all those specific requirements, I felt compelled to improve their experience.
This prompted me to develop my skills even more and create features which will help our vision-impaired customers. I completed my accessibility training and I am one of the first engineers from Australia to have completed a level two. So if there is anything related to accessibility, from an application development point of view, I can help with that.
I also reached out to the global Accessibility team, and they agreed to hold Accessibility week in Australia this year. The leaders from the core Accessibility team will be coming to Australia to increase awareness amongst our people at Intuit, our customers and show what we are doing to improve accessibility.
The great thing as well is that I don't have to work on this project outside of my work hours. At Intuit, we have a We Care & Give Back program which provides us with up to five days of paid time to volunteer. There is also an initiative within product development that allows engineers to spend 10 percent of their time on professional development or passion projects within Intuit.
To me, that is something really special. It's great to work for a company that recognises the importance of volunteering and giving back to the community.
