Tech Highlight: How data caching improved our site performance by 50%
In this blog post, the engineering team at Kelley Blue Book – which is part of the Cox Automotive family of brands – provides a behind-the-scenes peek into the technology that powers one of the most trusted resources in the automotive industry.
Written by Rachel Logan, Software Engineering Manager, Cox Automotive
On the Kelley Blue Book (KBB) engineering team, we highly value the performance and availability of our applications to support our heavily trafficked consumer site.
Fortunately for us, these applications require only a relatively moderate amount of primarily read-only data, in the hundreds of thousands of data points for most of the core functionality across several high traffic areas. To achieve this core functionality, we do not often need to create or update existing information.
Cox employees collaborating at work
Our needs in a data store
Given our high availability and performance goals and our desire to ensure data consistency across systems, a highly-performant distributed data-store with great read capabilities seemed like the best match for our needs. Because we wanted our solution to be easily usable for multiple teams with slightly different data requirements, we elected to use a distributed cache approach, with independent caches allocated to each application to ensure separation of concerns.
The service we chose
Our applications run on AWS, so we chose to use ElastiCache, which provides the ability to choose from either Memcached or Redis. We ended up crafting our common codebase to be able to use either one, which gives our teams the ability to make the choices that work best, but the teams primarily ended up going with Memcached.
We have been using ElastiCache as a key-value store, where the values are JSON-encoded objects and the keys are unique, for instance matching the API endpoint that returns the data. This key syntax made it easy for us to write a simple function which allows us to utilize read-through caching, where our cache sits in front of the data store and we will make a request to the data store if the key is not found in the cache.
Read-through caching with ElastiCache architecture
The benefits
This approach provides several benefits beyond just decreasing the response time of the current request. These additional benefits include reducing the strain on our APIs, improving our response times for subsequent requests and ensuring availability of previously requested data for the applications even if the underlying data store becomes unavailable or suffers from degraded performance. As shown in the graphic below, our response times are significantly higher when the cache is disabled. In fact, the average response time is almost doubled when the cache is disabled.
Response time comparisons when the cache is disabled
Pre-loading commonly requested fields
We have a good knowledge of which data will be most frequently utilized in our systems. As such, we chose to preload our high-level data, such as the details of each basic vehicle configuration. For requests that are likely not to be repeated, such as the pricing information for a fully configured vehicle for a specific location, we’ll make that request on demand.
We set a TTL (time to live) of the items in the cache to 8 hours and will “pre-cache” items every 6 hours, or whenever the data version for underlying data changes. We pre-cache anything that is likely to be requested multiple times. We have considered a few architectures for our approach to pre-caching, but for a few years now, we have been using AWS step functions, breaking different categories of data into different steps. We first run all the base steps, then we run the next set in parallel. For each step, we run those in parallel up to a maximum concurrency to ensure we fall below throttling limits.
Step function to precache data that is likely to be requested
By using this approach to storing and reading our data, our response times have decreased significantly, which helps our visitors search for their vehicle information approximately 50% faster than before. We’re really excited about the performance gains we have been able to make so far, and are looking forward to sharing more about our next set of improvements in a future blog post.
Learn how Cox Automotive technology teams are building a more connected and mobile future here.
Are you interested in joining our engineering team? Explore open positions here.
14 Questions with…
Ron Calderon, QA Analyst II at Cox Automotive
Ron Calderon is involved with testing Cox Automotive’s digital retailing platform to make sure it runs smoothly – and he could pass any pop culture trivia test with flying colors (we’ll have a more in-depth celebrity gossip chat with him another time). Elizabeth Saulsbury from our Employment Brand team sat down with Ron for the latest installment in our “Questions With” employee interview series.
Elizabeth: First things first. How are you today, Ron?
Ron: I’m amazing, Elizabeth.
E: Since we’re conducting this interview over video, I can see from the sun streaming in the window behind you that it’s a beautiful day in California. How long have you lived in The Golden State?
R: I was born and raised here in southern California, so I feel really spoiled. All my teammates are in Vermont, so I’m always giving them a hard time because we do have the best weather here. You can’t beat it.
E: You and I have chatted before and I know you’re a pop culture fanatic, so let me ask you this: what notable celebrity sightings have you had in SoCal?
R: Actually, not too many. A while back, I ran into Jamie Lee Curtis. And I saw Vince Vaughn at a restaurant once. I don’t know, is Vince Vaughn even relevant anymore?
E: I’m gonna say no.
R: Yeah. Anyway, those are the only two who come to mind right now.
E: You work in quality assurance at Cox Automotive. What’s your dream car?
R: Oddly, I’m not super into cars. I currently drive a Honda Civic, which I love, because it’s lasted me almost 15 years with little maintenance. I guess I would have to say my dream car would be a Porsche.
E: What motivates you during the workday?
R: My team communicates a lot. We’re always communicating and troubleshooting, and I think that’s what gets me pumped up. I’m the only person on my team who’s on the west coast, and they’re already communicating hours before I get up for the day. And seeing that communication before I start my day is motivating, because I already know what the day’s tasks are and what’s expected of me before I start.
E: Along the lines of communication…are you a texter or a caller?
R: I’m definitely a texter. It’s just so much easier, much faster.
E: Me too. Who was the last person you texted?
R: My best friend Brian.
E: Aside from speed-texting, what is a secret talent of yours?
R: Ooh. You know, we were talking about pop culture a minute ago, so I’ll circle back to that. I’m a pop culture whiz. I know so much random trivia. In fact, I’m part of the Pride ERG here at Cox and we just hosted a trivia event for employees that was all about pivotal LGBTQ+ pop culture moments throughout history. It was a ton of fun.
E: Last movie you saw?
R: It was a documentary on Tina Turner, who I love. It was amazing.
E: What’s a TV series that you loved to binge watch?
R: It’s so funny you bring that up, because I was binge-watching a show last night. I watched a new series on Hulu called Cruel Summer. I can’t stop watching it.
E: I know we need to move onto other topics, so this will be the last pop culture question, I promise: who’s a celebrity you look up to?
R: A celebrity I’ve always looked up to, even when I was a little kid because my mom was into her and I saw her twice in concert, would be Diana Ross.
E: That’s a great answer.
R: Oh, she’s amazing in concert. She’s the OG diva.
E: Tell me why people should work at Cox.
R: What I love about Cox is how they empower employees to explore their interests. For example, I’m working in a technology field, but I also have a creative side and I’ve been able to work with employee resource groups like PRIDE, Women With Drive and Ignite to explore that creative aspect of myself.
E: Tell me something you learned during COVID-19.
R: COVID-19 was definitely a reset for me. At first it was scary, but working from home has been amazing. I feel like my work-life balance is better than ever – I’m saving 15 hours a week not sitting in traffic. My place is always clean and tidy, I’m not rushing out the door all the time. So COVID-19 has really taught me to slow down and reset. I know a lot of people say that and it’s kind of corny, but it’s true for me.
E: When you think about what you want to be known for – what you want your legacy to be – how would you sum that up?
R: I like to make people laugh and make people feel comfortable. I want to be a nice person. I want to bring joy to people.
E: Well Ron, you certainly brought a lot of joy to my day with this interview, so thank you!
R: Thanks Elizabeth!
Interested in learning more about Cox’s culture? Click here.
Benefits Focus: How Alec Found Work-Life Balance at Cox
Alec Bettenhausen is a Senior Strategic Sales Manager at Cox Automotive. Two years ago, Alec made a life-changing decision: to step away from a career in his family’s automotive dealership, which was taking a toll on his physical health, mental wellbeing and relationships. When he joined Cox, Alec discovered a culture where employees’ time and personal lives are honored.
Alec Bettenhausen grew up in the family business: an automotive dealership in Chicago, IL.
He knew the dealership inside and out. He had been a janitor, an oil change tech, a service manager. He had been under cars in service bays and behind desks in the finance & insurance office. He loved the world of automotive – the beautiful mechanism of cars, the intricacies of dealership operations, the way he helped customers find freedom and mobility.
When his older sister declined the opportunity to run the dealership, Alec was next in line to inherit the title of General Manager. His family set him up for success, providing him with hands-on knowledge and enrollment in NADA (National Automobile Dealers Association) Academy.
But as much as Alec loved working in automotive, his job was having a deteriorating effect on him.
“I was putting work in front of everything else,” Alec said. “I wasn’t taking days off. I would go into work early, skipping the gym and breakfast. I wouldn’t leave at my scheduled time. It was very taxing. And I was my own worst enemy – I was doing it to myself. It became unhealthy.”
So unhealthy, in fact, that Alec ended up getting physically sick from the stress. Forced to step away from his work, he took two weeks off to detox.
“I spent a lot of that time with my wife to go over our priorities,” Alec said. “She shared some of the things she was experiencing with me being overly committed at work, and I realized something had to change.”
Alec was on the edge of burnout. He knew it was time to have a talk with his family.
“My family saw me struggling – we had to have a tough conversation about ‘Is this really what’s right for me?’,” he said. “I never really saw that there was an alternative path to the dealership; I had to change my perspective and think about what I wanted most in life. I was aging myself, working myself to death.”
He was presented with an ultimatum: be all in, or all out. He chose the latter.
Alec had a friend who worked at Cox Automotive who encouraged him to apply for an open position. Alec now works with dealerships in a new capacity: serving as a trusted advisor who knows their business needs firsthand.
“Cox has helped me understand the value of my time,” Alec said. “I have new appreciation and respect for myself and a new kind of confidence and self-love. I get to enjoy my life while knowing I put in a solid day of work at day’s end. I have the support of the company, which allows me personal time that I didn’t value before.”
Workaholic habits die hard, and Alec had a bit of culture shock upon arriving at Cox. In addition to a company environment that puts people first, Cox’s tangible work-life balance policies – including unlimited PTO, flexible work schedules and paid volunteer hours – empower employees to prioritize their personal lives; and this was foreign to Alec. He learned to leave his work phone at home when going to dinner with his wife, to take vacations, to block time for creativity during the workday and to close his laptop at 5 o’clock.
“At Cox, you’re fed a message from the top down that says it’s good to have balance,” Alec said. “It was a hard transition for me. But because of the support from the top, it made it easier for me to adapt. My blood pressure has gone down, my stress has decreased, my eating habits have normalized and my relationships with my wife and others have improved. I’m thankful for Cox.”
Now, Alec wants to share his story and experiences with others who are desperate for work-life balance. Here’s his advice:
“Are you enjoying life right now? Or are you telling yourself you’re enjoying it? Because I was stuck in a route where I was always excited for ‘tomorrow’ – the idea of the future and where I’d eventually be. I kept looking forward to that. But it cost me a lot of relationship capital, time and stress. And it cost me a big part of myself. I will always recommend Cox – I can tell you that it’s a night and day difference from when I didn’t work at Cox to when I did.”
Want to learn more about employee benefits at Cox? Click here.
Ready to start your own career journey at Cox? See open roles here.
Benefits Focus: How Rachelle Uses Cox’s Health and Wellness Benefits
Rachelle Petusky is an Industry Intelligence Manager at Cox Automotive. As a wellness enthusiast and mother of two, having access to excellent, affordable healthcare is very important to Rachelle. At Cox, she’s experienced perks that truly take care of employees.
It’s safe to say that health has been top-of-mind for many Americans over the past 13 months. Rachelle Petusky – Industry Intelligence Manager at Cox Automotive in Atlanta, GA – is no different.
Rachelle said that in the turmoil of the pandemic, as well as the mild everyday chaos that comes with raising two small boys, she has peace of mind knowing that Cox’s healthcare benefits have her family covered.
“If a medical emergency was to happen or something came up unexpectedly, I won’t be as anxious about it because I have the healthcare coverage to manage it,” Rachelle said.
Rachelle has worked in Research & Market Intelligence at Cox Automotive for almost 11 years. Having an inquisitive mind is central to her role in data storytelling and answering big business questions, so it’s no surprise that she’s done her own research into how Cox’s medical benefits stack up against other companies.
“Cox has far and beyond one of the best healthcare benefits packages,” Rachelle said, citing conversations she’s had with friends who work at other organizations.
What specifically does Cox offer? It starts with a generous suite of healthcare benefits with various deductible options. Adding onto that are free in-network women’s care, pharmacy benefits, telehealth offerings, FSA and HSA options, supplemental insurance, enhanced coverage for autism and developmental delays, coverage for gender confirmation surgery and more.
Cox also offers ongoing wellness benefits like free onsite health screenings and flu shots, programs to support weight loss and diabetes, counseling, healthy lifestyle coaching and free access to OpenFit and Headspace apps – the latter of which Rachelle found extremely beneficial during COVID-19.
“Working from home, I’ve needed a way to unwind at the end of the day and decompress,” Rachelle said. “Headspace, particularly their relaxation and nighttime activities in the app, have been really helpful to help me reset and recharge ahead of the next day. That being offered as a benefit to us for free is huge.”
Telehealth is another free benefit that Rachelle is particularly grateful for.
“I’ve had great experiences with it,” she said. “The fact that we could see a doctor for non-emergency situations but still in real-time during the pandemic was great. I have two very active kids who get into a lot of things. Being able to pick up the phone, login, wait 5-10 minutes and get a diagnosis on the spot was very helpful. We’ve seen everything from a dermatologist to primary care, getting this concierge doctor experience from home. It’s very nice that Cox waives the co-pay, so you’re not worried about that either.”
Pre-COVID, when her boys were babies and she frequently traveled for work, Rachelle took advantage of Cox’s free access to Milk Stork. This is a service that allows traveling moms to send their milk home via FedEx overnight for free.
“I’ve been fortunate as a working mom who breastfed, being very supported by my managers and the company,” Rachelle said. “It really reemphasized to me how Cox supports working moms and how they value the balance of being a present mom as well as an employee.”
Aside from Cox’s stated healthcare benefits, Rachelle said that an emphasis on wellness permeates the company and empowers employees to take care of themselves. Rachelle herself enjoys working out in group fitness classes and being part of an unofficial Cox Peloton group that schedules weekly rides.
“You’re encouraged to block time to do a workout, to go on that walk on your lunch break, or whatever,” Rachelle said. “You’re very much encouraged to do whatever you need to feel good and stay healthy.”
Want to learn more about employee benefits at Cox? Click here.
Ready to start your own career journey at Cox? See open roles here.
Tonya Makes Automotive Technology Fast and Flexible
This month, we’re spotlighting the people who work Behind the Code at Cox. Read below to learn how our technology employees are building a better tomorrow.
Fast, lightweight innovation
For Tonya Wallace, being agile is a way of life.
We’re not just talking about being flexible and resilient (though as a hardworking mother of six, Tonya has plenty of experience with that too!). We’re referring also to Agile methodology: an IT project management approach used to deliver fast, high-quality technology solutions.
Tonya, Director of Agile Delivery at Cox Automotive, is an advocate and user of the agile methodology and its accompanying frameworks. She knows firsthand that the methodology allows for collaboration and quicker results.
“Our company drives to the same scaled agile framework, which helps to deliver high business value in short-cycle increments,” Tonya explained. “That’s the whole point of agility: to get the product out to the customer as quickly as possible, to get feedback as quickly as possible and to iterate on what that feedback is.”
Tonya leads agile delivery for four release trains. Each powers finance and insurance solutions that enable the behind-the-scenes of the car-buying process, such as digital contracting and lender aftermarket products. The newest of her release trains will lead Cox Automotive’s AWS migration to cloud services in a two-year effort.
The importance of agility really hit home for Tonya in March 2020, when COVID struck and automotive dealers could not be on-site in their offices.
“So what do you do if you’re a dealer who’s still relying on paper and face-to-face transactions?” said Tonya. “We quickly pivoted and delivered assisted remote signing out into the field. That’s the benefit of having smart people working within an agile framework. We broke down silos. People worked across different teams and trains, and we leveraged our remote environment like nobody’s business.”
Behind the code and finding the “why”
Tonya’s tech roots were planted in 2002 when she opened a small, minority-owned tech company to build custom applications with small teams of developers.
“I fell in love with requirements, automation, collaboration, iterative development and relentless improvement,” Tonya said of her first experience in the field. “I didn’t find out about Agile until years later, and I went back to school for my MBA in project management in order to enhance my understanding and knowledge about the project management discipline.”
Post-graduation, Tonya hit the ground running with her new passion and skills.
She was hired as a business analyst with the Department of Revenue, where she participated in Agile transformation. She moved on to a pharmaceutical company, where she led the cloud platform Agile team as a process specialist and trainer, coach and consulting liaison. Afterwards, she became senior scrum master and Agile coach at an automotive technology company. But in these positions, Tonya said she found the project management process to be – well, not agile.
“It was very heavy, very rigorous, very stringent,” Tonya said about one experience. “No one led with the ‘why,’ so people didn’t understand why we were doing things the way we were doing them, and if we lack buy-in, it creates gaps.”
A friend who worked at Cox recommended that Tonya explore a position with the company. In 2018, Tonya became a senior release train engineer for Cox Automotive’s DealerTrack brand. Not only did Tonya find Cox’s tech teams more conducive to Agile, but her leadership skills blossomed in Cox’s flexible environment too. Tonya has since spearheaded initiatives, facilitated DISC personality trainings and served as a thought leader in the industry.
Tonya has the heart of a teacher, and that translates to her life outside of work too. She loves being able to nurture and coach her daughter and five sons.
“The way I parent is the way I coach an agile team,” she said. “I believe the strong foundational principles of having the confidence to fail fast, self-organize, be courageous and transparent and drive toward relentless improvement builds solid character. I will often run mini retrospectives after practices and games!”
Giving everyone a voice
Tonya contrasted Cox with other companies when it comes to valuing employees.
“I love that Cox gives engineers a voice,” she said. “I’ve seen workplaces where it’s more of a ‘just sit there and code’ type of environment. Not here. They encourage communication and transparency. All teams have the ability to share ideas. We have senior leaders inboxing engineers to say things like ‘How are you? Is everything going okay? I saw you did XYZ today and I wanted to thank you.’ I’ve never had that at any other company.”
Tonya said one reason why voices are elevated at Cox is because it’s a culture of achievement.
“This is an organization of high-performers,” Tonya said (and she would know!). “What we do matters. We’re creating things that will progress our culture, our environment, our world and how we do business tomorrow.”
Tonya, who is part of Cox’s diversity and inclusion working group, added that Cox is intentional about its stance on increasing numbers of minority employees in leadership positions and nurturing talent and diverse employees within the company.
And the cherry on top?
“Sometimes in companies, you’ll find personalities clashing and a cutthroat environment. I’ve found that people here are nice. I mean, actually, genuinely nice. We’re constantly pushing the message of collaboration, communication and respect. I’ve never seen leaders so accommodating and caring.”
Interested in learning more about the people who make innovation happen at Cox? Check out the rest of our Behind the Code series and follow along on social using #BehindTheCode.
How Emmet Crafts Software Solutions at Cox
This month, we’re spotlighting the people who work Behind the Code at Cox. Read below to learn how our technology employees are building a better tomorrow.
From custom cabinets to single-sign-on
In another life, Emmet McGuire might have been a carpenter.
It’s something of a family business: his father, uncles and brother all do carpentry for a living. And while Emmet isn’t a craftsman by trade, he loves building things and always has a project happening at his home in Burlington, VT.
His talent for constructing things makes Emmet a natural fit for his role as a Lead Software Test Engineer at Cox Automotive.
“I think my family’s history of carpentry instilled in me the passion to build things the right way, which translates well to developing software,” he said.
In 2009, Emmet started working a software tester at Dealer.com (acquired by Cox Automotive in 2015). He’s been promoted many times since, becoming a QA tester, a QA engineer, a senior QA engineer, a lead QA engineer and a senior software test engineer before moving into his current position.
Emmet loves the variety of projects he’s worked on at Cox.
“I have had the opportunity to work in different product spaces over the years,” he said. “When I was part of the Dealer.com group, I worked on teams that developed our websites as well as the backend services which support our websites and inventory. I got to work on projects for large customers like Ford and Subaru, but also projects that were used by the millions of users shopping for cars on Dealer.com websites.”
Behind the code and building solutions
Emmet was an electrical engineer at a large technology company before joining Dealer.com.
“That switch was like a breath of fresh air to me,” he said. “I took computer science classes as part of my education and I always enjoyed them, but it wasn’t until I started my career as an electrical engineer that I realized hardware wasn’t for me. I wanted to work on software.”
Emmet explained that in his previous job, projects took months or even years to complete.
“But being on an Agile Scrum team at Cox Auto, we work in two-week sprints and that’s a much better pace for me. You also have a much closer working relationship with your team, and that’s what I needed to be successful.”
Emmet credits those close relationships with his growth as a technical leader. And he loves the fact that he and his colleagues have a prominent voice in the company.
“Working in tech at Cox Automotive is simultaneously fun, exciting, challenging and rewarding,” he said. “I think for a lot of companies, the testing role is looked at as an afterthought or secondary to the development team, but that couldn’t be further from the truth when it comes to Cox Auto.”
Cox’s tech team members are high performers, and Emmet said he is consistently challenged to evolve the way he develops and tests software. One example he gave was the company’s switch from traditional development and release processes to CI/CD, which brings with it a slew of challenges.
“As a team, we had to learn what the implications of that were, and how to best handle it,” he said. “I am very proud of the process that we came up with, and we feel extremely comfortable releasing production changes that impact millions of users a month multiple times a day without users noticing any issues.”
Emmet explained that when there is an issue, his team almost always knows about it before any customers do.
“For the application my team owns, we have a 99.95% availability, so we can’t have many outages and we’ve been able to keep that standard, while releasing as frequently as we do. From a testing point of view, the primary process we use for maintaining that availability through all our releases are Blue/Green deploys, and running automated tests on the inactive instance before routing traffic to the new instance. That’s a massive oversimplification, but that’s a critical process for achieving the high level of success that we have been able to achieve.”
A second family
COVID has changed a lot of things about the average workweek. Emmet believes that his team’s relationships and rapport have remained intact.
“In terms of environment and culture, my team is like my second family,” he said. “I really enjoy working with every single person, and they are all incredibly smart, thoughtful people. I don’t think there is a single person at Cox Auto that I couldn’t learn from, and that’s a very humbling experience.”
Interested in learning more about the people who make innovation happen at Cox? Check out the rest of our Behind the Code series and follow along on social using #BehindTheCode.
6 Things to Focus on in Your Tech Career
David Rice, SVP of Product & Engineering at Cox, recommends you consider these focus areas as you look for your next career move.
Want to read more about David Rice and why he’s motivated to help early career developers? Check out his blog story.
What I Wish I Had Known In My Early Career
Up Close Interview with David Rice, Senior Vice President of Product & Engineering
David Rice is a Senior Vice President of Product & Engineering at Cox Automotive and works in Austin, TX. We chatted with David about his story, his passion for cultivating early-career talent, and his advice to software developers.
Q: Hi David! Tell us about your Cox career story, and tell us what you do.
A: I was part of vAuto when it was acquired by Autotrader in 2010; at the time, I was a senior software engineer. After joining Cox, I became a product engineering leader and at some point or another, I’ve have worked on almost every retail software product.
Before vAuto, I worked for a start-up called Digital Motorworks. I got really good at fixing problems, and that was where I first got to see the effect of systems thinking: seeing how complex systems get put together. And you can put that same thinking into understanding how an organization should flow and interconnect, and how to fix its problems. For the past 10 years, I’ve been applying that same thought process: ‘how do I get the system working, and what are its breakages?’
Q: It sounds like you’ve had the opportunity to impact many projects and witness a lot of change. What have you learned from those experiences that you would share with early-career professionals?
A: All the change has led me to understand is that it’s okay not to perfectly understand everything. You know, coming from a software engineering background, I always want stuff to be binary/black and white. And the reality is, sometimes the complexity is just too high. You’re not always going to understand, and you only sometimes have the time to break things down into the smallest parts to fully understand. Accept that some level of inability to understand is okay and learn when to make decisions with incomplete knowledge.
Q: You’ve given presentations to students at the University of Texas about the things you wish you had known at the start of your career. Tell us about the backstory of those presentations.
A: When I was in college, a friend’s dad gave me a call while I was working in a non-computer science-related job. He gave me a summer job in Computer Science (CS) and fundamentally, what he said to me was: ‘I want you to come in because I think you’re going to cause trouble with the team. You don’t know what you can’t do, so you’re going to go down paths that the team has dismissed. They are moving too slow and taking too long.’ So, I got to experience that as a young professional, and it challenged me because I wanted to go in and prove myself.
I’ve seen that pattern with people who are fresh out of school. They bring new learnings and they come from places of new perspectives. At vAuto, I wanted to bring in students because I thought they provided a sense of exuberance and energy. Knowing that, I decided to go to the University of Texas to talk to some of these students and see if we could bring them on board.
Q: What was the main thing you wanted students to take away from your presentation?
A: I was told that I’d be doing an “info-session,” where I would essentially come in and talk to the students about what my company does. And I thought, ‘I don’t want to do that – that’s so boring!’ So instead, I wanted to take a perspective of “what I wish I knew.”
When you start in tech, the thing you’re most interested in is writing code and creating cool things. But the reality is, there are a whole bunch of facets of the field that you don’t figure out until later. You don’t necessarily know the right questions to ask to get you to the answers. So that’s what I wanted to talk to them about. We got great feedback from the students and my team. I’ve done the presentation about four times now. And I’ve been able to push for a lot of early-career hires at Cox. Want to know David’s top questions to ask? Check out our helpful guide.
Q: What other advice would you give to early-career developers?
A: The key is a diversity of skills. Make sure you’ve looked at different data constructs, programs, and programming languages. Having diversity of skills means that you can learn. You need to be able to demonstrate that. If you show me that you can learn skills and talk intelligently about them, that’s what I look for in hires.
One of my favorite interview questions is “how do you use software to solve problems around you that aren’t work-related?” A common behavior I’ve seen with great software developers is that they do stuff with the software even outside of their jobs. They solve real problems with it. For example, one of my early-career hires, Stacy, was active in collecting anime merchandise and she wrote a program to store her entire collection in a database. Those kinds of behaviors, that kind of passion…you can’t teach that, so I hone in on those kinds of questions in the interview process.
Q: If you could go back in time to the early stages of your career, what would you tell yourself?
A: Three things. First, I would tell myself not to get so stuck on closing doors to certain things. When I was in my early career, I was determined that I wouldn’t be in management. There was a lot of binary thought in that way. So, I would tell myself to get over myself a bit, and that it’s okay to look at other options.
Secondly, I’d ask myself: whom do I want to work with? These are people that you’re going to spend a lot of time with. Are these people that you can learn with and hang out with? Make sure they are. You spend more waking time at work than with your family.
And, the last thing is, find a mentor. The mentoring relationship is best done when both people have something to learn. Find someone who can tell you things you don’t know, has experience in a path you want to take and make sure they get something out of the relationship as well.
Special thanks to David for sharing his story and insights. To learn more about vAuto, visit the company’s website. To learn more about a technology career at Cox, visit our technology page.
Career Advice from Kelley Joyner, Marketing Director at Cox Automotive
Kelley Joyner’s first role model is her mother. But there are another two dozen or so women she draws inspiration from: The U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team.
For Joyner, a former competitive soccer player who is now Director of Marketing Traffic Acquisition at Cox Automotive, the team members embody teamwork, support and goal setting in a society where their accomplishments remain undervalued.
“They work well together as a team,” Joyner says. “But off the field, those women fight for personal values like integrity, equality, respect, and collaboration.”
Those are values she carries through in her work at Cox Automotive.
Joyner previously worked in performance marketing, specifically paid search for several agencies. After running the marketing initiative and the paid search campaigns for Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book at a third-party firm, she knew that Cox Automotive was where she wanted to be next.
“I kept a close eye on the job opportunities at Cox Automotive, and I have been here for three years,” she says. “It was one of the best career decisions I ever made.”
As Director of Marketing Traffic Acquisition, Joyner oversees the team handling performance marketing for Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book’s consumer campaigns. That means planning, tracking and adjusting campaigns to achieve car dealers’ online traffic and lead goals. She finds the immediate, measurable impact of her work immensely satisfying.
“I love that for every penny my team spends in marketing, we know exactly what we get in return for it,” she says.
Joyner says her leadership style is rooted in building relationships. She makes personal connections and gives everyone on her team a voice in how to achieve their shared goals. Kelley believes her experience, knowledge and demonstrated proficiency is what makes her stand out in the workplace.
“In order to get people to listen, you need to prove that you’re an expert in your field,” she says. “But you have to build the relationship so that they trust your opinion.”
Read more of Kelley’s advice for your career by visiting coxenterprises.com.
Cox Automotive author recognizes women pioneers in automotive from the 1940s and ’50s
Constance Smith is an author, women’s rights advocate, inventor and Dealer Support Specialist at Dealertrack.
Constance Smith is an author, women’s rights advocate, inventor and Dealer Support Specialist at Dealertrack. And she’s on a mission. She wants to ensure that the groundbreaking contributions of female designers working in American car companies during the 1940s and 1950s is not lost to history.
In her recently-published book, Damsels in Design: Women Pioneers in the Automotive Industry, 1939-1959, Smith chronicles the overlooked or even mis-attributed legacy of 20 women. These women are responsible for safety and design advancements still used in cars today, including both the first substantial child safety seat and the safety latches and belts used to secure the seat inside the car. Another young lady penned the first Head Up Display for General Motors. Others dictated styling inside and out.
ABOUT CONSTANCE SMITH
Smith was one of only two women studying in the graduate Industrial Design Department at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute in the 1970s. After graduation, with models of an experimental safety vehicle and the first heated/cooled compartment for cars in her portfolio, General Motors recruited her to join their Advanced Concepts Studio. At the GM Tech Center, she worked on early liquid crystal displays, the technology at the heart of computer monitors, designed instrument panels and helped solve the engineering challenge of installing airbags. After leaving General Motors, she taught at the University of Bridgeport and Pratt. Mid-career, she received a NEA Award in Design Arts and conducted ergonomics research developing electronic components to assist the arthritically limited driver. Her passion for inventing remains. Smith was later placed at a Chevrolet franchise for training by GM in her quest to buy a Cadillac franchise before a downturn in the economy.
She was always struck by the lack of mentorship available to females in the automotive industry, and the institutional attitudes and discrimination that continued to hold women back.
Even while studying at Pratt Institute, she’d taken note of how women were treated differently, proposing a thesis on “Women in Industrial Design,” of which her male department did not approve.
“I wanted to give women the credit for what they’ve done – add them to our history books.” Smith explained.
Click here to read more about Constance Smith and visit jobs.coxenterprises.com to learn more about #LifeAtCox.
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