Inside Jobs: How Pinterest’s Top Engineering Exec Really Works

We in the tech press are great at covering what it’s like to be a startup founder. But the world does not live by entrepreneurs alone.

One big reason that companies are so keen to tout venture capital fundraising is because the new money enables them to hire more staff – the people who build stuff, who really make the tech industry tick. Ideally, that flashy funding can help them attract some of the industry’s most kick-ass backend engineers, product managers, the UX designers. The top-tier tech people who are on the receiving end of the whole “hiring craze” everyone seems to be talking about.

What do those people actually do? Who are they? It’s something that TechCrunch doesn’t often talk about. But we should.

And that’s why I’m happy to introduce Inside Jobs, a new TechCrunch TV series that covers the work lives of the people who make this whole crazy world go ’round.

For our premeire episode of Inside Jobs, we’re so happy to have Jon Jenkins, who is the Director of Engineering at a little web property you might have heard of called Pinterest. Despite its massive reach (and massive funding), Pinterest is still in many ways a startup at heart, with an engineering team that clearly punches above its weight when compared to other big web names that have engineering teams many times its size.

Jenkins joining Pinterest was one of those hiring coups that was covered by many tech reporters – yours truly included – so it was a big pleasure to have him give us a glimpse into what exactly he does every day, and the challenges and perks that come with his gig.

Credits for Inside Jobs go to producer and production coordinator Felicia Williams, and producer, shooter and editor John Murillo.