TeamSnappers Manager Highlight: Skyler Seamans, Brands & Members Engineering Manager

They say people don’t leave companies, they leave managers. And if you ask any TeamSnapper what they love about their work, you’ll hear a common answer: “The people.” At TeamSnap we spend a ton of time connecting with our colleagues and want to shout out some of our awesome managers too. We’ve flipped the script on our #TeamSnappersTalk series to #TeamSnappersManagerHighlight to highlight what makes our managers unique and give you a snapshot of what working with Skyler, our Brands and Members Engineering Manager, is like.

 

What’s your TeamSnap story?

TeamSnap originally attracted me because of their forward-thinking views on remote work. I had a friend working at TeamSnap and she knew I was casually looking for a remote job so she referred me. After working at TeamSnap for a year, I decided to travel around the country in an Airstream travel trailer. The freedom of remote work and the trust the company placed in me has made the last five years at TeamSnap some of the most memorable of my life. I’ve traveled from Alaska to Baja MX and all the way to Newfoundland. All the while maintaining a fulfilling job that has kept my mind sharp and grown my skill set by leaps and bounds. I stay at TeamSnap because the trusting mindset is so deeply ingrained in the culture at TeamSnap and the deep relationships I’ve made with the people on my team.

 

When did you decide you wanted to pursue a path into management? 

I don’t think I ever made a conscious choice. I am a problem-solver by nature. If I see an issue, I’ll pursue a solution to it, regardless of the problem domain. This trait has always steered my career. In the past several years, it has steered me more into leadership and management.

 

What’s one of the biggest mistakes you’ve made as a leader? What did you take away from this?

I can think of many times I’ve attempted to drive change and my solution has completely flopped. What I’ve learned is that a good solution alone cannot solve a problem. There are many factors that influence success and some of them are often overlooked; building consensus, getting buy-in, involving the team in the decision, planning detailed first steps, and great execution are a few of the key things that drive solutions. 

 

How do you motivate your team, particularly when there’s a daunting problem to solve?

This varies from teammate to teammate – every individual finds motivation in different ways. For some, it could be emphasizing the business impact of the problem. For others, an interesting technical challenge or new technology to learn is a source of motivation. Overall, the first step is to listen to what motivates your team and find ways to fulfill that. 

 

In what ways have you upgraded the skills and/or supported the career paths of your team?

One of the best things about TeamSnap is that we support “moving about the cabin”. If a TeamSnapper is interested in learning a different part of the stack, or a different part of the business, we can facilitate that and make it happen. 

 

What’s a team success that you’re most proud of? 

We developed a COVID-19 screening tool called Health Check during a hackathon. This was a typical hackathon project in that it was built quickly and wasn’t 100% robust. TeamSnap saw a ton of value in the feature and really wanted to release the feature to all of our customers at scale quickly.  Youth sports were just starting to scratch the surface of returning so we knew we needed to move quickly. We started with an extremely aggressive goal of one week to ensure the feature was scalable, polish the iOS experience, finish the web experience and develop it from scratch on Android. The team rallied around the problem, aggressively cut scope, and ultimately shipped it on time. Since then we’ve made some really great updates based on our customer’s feedback for what they need to implement a health screening process for a safe return to sport. Recently, we surpassed 8 million Health Checks completed!

 

Do you also love working in sports and thrive in a fast-paced, fun environment? Check out our current openings at https://www.teamsnap.com/careers.