Sharing a reply I made previously on Zhihu: What is it like to work at Mapbox? - Zhihu https://www.zhihu.com/question/268843176
When I first arrived at Mapbox, I had the privilege of attending a two-week Mapbox US Sprint, and I'd like to share my overall impressions of this trip to the US.
At Mapbox, new employees often need to communicate with colleagues in the US, which gives plenty of opportunities to participate in some training sessions (Sprints) in the US. I left Baidu to join Mapbox in March, and the purpose of this Sprint was to connect with relevant teams here in the US. The schedule was arranged for a full two weeks: one week in Washington and one week in San Francisco. For someone like me, who had never been to the Americas before, this arrangement was absolutely fantastic.
After confirming the departure and return times, I needed to create some tickets in the corresponding GitHub repositories to notify the relevant colleagues. Regarding tickets: within Mapbox, we discuss everything, big or small, through GitHub issues, referred to as tickets. Information at Mapbox is highly transparent; everyone can see almost all issues. In fact, I found that there is nothing you can't see, only what you can't think of. This was a huge eye-opener for me, coming from a domestic company where public information was much more limited, and I was left there wide-eyed, silently exclaiming, "Wow!" I also noticed that there seemed to be some mysterious bots within the company. After I submitted my travel plans on GitHub, a bot automatically @ me, pointing out that I forgot to include the time for my layover. This was quite fascinating to me.
Once the travel itinerary was confirmed and tickets were created, I could freely go to our partner site to purchase flight tickets and hotels. You could decide on the specific departure time based on your itinerary and choose your preferred airline (which for someone like me, a mileage enthusiast, was just amazing). Of course, although free to choose, you usually make a reasonable decision combining specific prices. The same goes for hotels; you could choose your preferred hotel near the company, and once you placed the order, it automatically settled using the company’s credit card.
This trip was very considerate of the company, as I had two colleagues who could speak Chinese with me in the US (it proved that they indeed provided substantial help with communication and meeting arrangements). However, because everyone's travel plans were different, I had to wait until Monday to meet them. Until Monday, I had to rely on myself. Although it sounded somewhat challenging, given my past experiences of solo traveling in Tibet, going with my wife to New Zealand, and independently learning diving in Sabah, alongside a few years of English learning after graduation, I thought it shouldn’t be a problem. However, once I arrived, I realized that language was the biggest issue. Having studied English solely in China led to a strange outcome—I could understand over 95% of the English spoken by Chinese people, but with the local Americans, I even began to doubt if I had learned the 'correct' English. I could only comprehend about 90% of what a few people said, while I could only understand around 60% of what many others communicated. So, in the first week’s meetings, I basically sat there listening like a cactus, gradually getting accustomed and relaxed as time went on.
Speaking of English, I remember a funny moment at customs in Detroit. The customs officer asked me several questions, like "Are you carrying food?" and "Are you carrying dangerous goods?" After trying to figure out what he was saying, I responded with a no. Then he paused for a moment, said “good,” and smiled while asking, “Have you plan to sea?” I thought he was asking if I wanted to see the beach in America and casually answered “Yes.” Suddenly, the officer's smile vanished, and he looked at me in surprise. This action startled me, and I quickly reflected on whether I had said something wrong, suddenly realizing that he was not asking about the beach, but rather, “Have you take plant and seeds?” I hurriedly corrected myself, “No No No.” Thankfully, he didn’t give me any trouble and stamped my passport with a 6-month stay permit.
Offices in the US are very fashionable, especially the one in DC, which is one of the coolest offices I have ever been to (and the other one is our current office in Shanghai, haha).
The offices always have endless free drinks and snacks.
The walls of the office often display visual maps made by our engineers, which are very beautiful. The middle area of the DC office has a very large hall akin to a café, where everyone can find their favorite spot to sit and work, discuss issues, or relax and grab a snack.
Almost every meeting room is equipped with a large display, and after checking into the meeting room, you can directly start remote meetings with colleagues from other locations, or project your desktop onto the display, which is very modern.
Finally, here's a fun fact: our DC office has a GENDER NEUTRAL restroom! Of course, don’t think too much; there will still be individual stalls inside. However, it feels a bit strange when a girl suddenly enters or exits while you’re washing your hands, constantly double-checking in your mind if you've run into the wrong restroom.
The "neutral" restroom at the DC office
During my time in the US, most of the time was spent understanding various projects with colleagues from different departments, often leading to in-depth discussions. Here are a few key impressions that stood out to me, which I believe are significantly different from those in the domestic environment:
Colleagues are incredibly friendly.
As you walk through the office, you'll find that most people will enthusiastically greet you. Even some colleagues that I didn’t know would often smile and greet me with “Hi, how is it going?” This friendly relationship among colleagues instantly makes you feel integrated into the group. Compared to the hurried and expressionless individuals focused solely on their tasks, it makes you feel much more at ease.
Strong sense of time: it’s best to schedule a meeting when discussing issues with others, and no meetings ever exceed the allocated time.
Punctuality left a deep impression on me. In my previous work experience, I was already accustomed to sudden and severe overtimes. I had also been used to using a calendar to arrange work, but for various reasons, I never truly stuck to it. At Mapbox, this is a place that genuinely utilizes the calendar; virtually every meeting is scheduled with a calendar invite that clearly states the time, location, attendees, and whether the recipients have accepted the meeting. Another astonishing thing for me was that meetings here almost never exceed their allotted time. In the past two weeks, I attended countless meetings, and not one has ended late.
Internal discussions about work are very interesting.
In some internal discussions, beyond common technical communication, many interesting topics arise that further attract you to the company’s culture. One memorable post was from a colleague who needed time off to reunite with family; after submitting a ticket, he casually shared a photo of himself with his family, holding his nephew, joking, “My niece is 2.5 years old, and my nephew is 10 months old, this is the last time I hold a child (just joking, I know how to hold a child).”
Additionally, some people share their learning experiences at Mapbox. I remember one post on how someone went from knowing nothing to becoming quite familiar with the work, which included many of their own study notes. This post was very well-written and garnered many responses.
Another surprising detail was that foreigners also share memes! Yes, that’s right; in many posts, you can see some very interesting gifs. Here are a few I collected:
Mapbox is one of the most interesting and coolest companies I have worked at since I started my career 10 years ago. Beyond its diverse culture, there are many other things worth savoring.
