Meet the Ripplers: Ray’s journey of growth and the ever evolving Time Off app

Name: Ray Li
Role: Software Engineer 2
Location: New York, NY
Rippler since: May 2022

My journey at Rippling

Let’s start with a fun fact: I was in the original Internship Cohort at Rippling. What made Rippling different was the opportunity and to be honest, they had me at “go and see.” That’s exactly what I wanted from both an internship opportunity and in my career, so when I was introduced to that Leadership principle early on, I was in.

Another factor that made it clear Rippling was the place I needed to be was that after my internship, I realized I was applying my learnings from Rippling in all other areas. It just seemed like an obvious choice.

When I joined my team, I was engineer number three. Since then, I’ve been extremely lucky to see growth not only in the size of the teams I’ve worked on, but in my career as well. Rippling is a fast pace and high growth environment and there is opportunity around every corner and available to everyone. I’ve never been scared by the size of the challenge. From day one, I’ve been willing to jump in and learn and help on anything I can, even a request from someone I’m not familiar with or work directly with, because I love solving problems for others. I think my approach to this has helped me move up to that next level in my career as quickly as I have.

Time Off: More than just setting your Out of Office 

Behind the simple motion of creating a leave request lies a pretty complicated system. 

Whenever I talk about the time off app, people's first thought is always that it sounds very simple - an app to create Time Off. What makes it unique is the thousands of combinations that are different from how people take and accrue time off. 

Some companies have a fixed amount each year, other companies have employees accrue by hours worked. Then you have geographical differences - in certain countries, holiday hours and vacation hours can accrue additional time off hours. For example, France treats vacation hours not as a single balance, but different balances from previous years. 

Then we factor in all the other types of leave that aren’t just “vacation.” Details on the requirements surrounding maternity leave, paternity leave, parental leave, sick-leave and all the other numerous different leave types a company may offer and a company may mandate create numerous combinations of offerings our App must support. 

Finally, and the most important part, leave requests need to be paid accurately depending on the local law, settings, and employees' work hours. It’s a complex system that needs a high level of customizability to fit all of the different use cases our customers may come across.

My biggest learning at Rippling

My biggest “learn” at Rippling hasn’t come in the most traditional way, as in it wasn’t learning a piece of code or anything. Last year, I received one of the best pieces of advice and I think it not only helped push me to who I am today, and something I will share with team members as I grow in my career. “A lot of people see school as the end of learning and a job as a job, but you should always seek new ways of learning.” If you continue to learn new technologies, continue to polish your craft in coding, and continue to solve bigger and more challenging problems, you will differentiate yourself from other engineers with time. For me, I try to put this into practice by joining a tech related reading club, running system design discussion learning sessions for interns, taking advantage of career development opportunities Rippling offers, and staying on top of the latest technology through research. This is something I’m dedicated to believing and living by and encouraging others looking for similar growth to do the same.

Tips for Future Ripplers

Rippling is a place full of opportunities. As the company continues to scale in both customer size and geographic diversity, there will always be interesting challenges and opportunities around every corner. Don’t be afraid to take these on when you see them as challenges and opportunities will help you learn and grow your skill sets in ways only Rippling can help you do. If you are an intern or very early on in your career and looking to learn at a fast-growing company, this holds especially true for you! Make sure to ask questions and absorb as much knowledge as possible, whether it relates to your primary team and project or not!

Memorable Rippling moments

I think the one thing that sticks out the most to me was returning after being an intern to a full time position – having so many people recognize and greet me again, welcome me back and offer their time and resources to make me successful in my new role. It really shows the type of culture Rippling has – you aren’t just another face at the office, we are all here for the success of the product and for each other.

When I’m not building Rippling, I’m…

Yo-yoing. I’ve been yo-yoing since elementary school and even did a TEDx talk about it when I was in high school. During my internship with Rippling, I competed in the 2022 US National Yo-Yo contest and placed 6th in the International division! I asked our CEO Parker for a Rippling shirt to wear during the competition and came back after the competition as a bit of a yo-yo celebrity around the office.
I’ve also recently started reading research papers…for fun. I’m part of a community who loves reading academic computer science papers and started a monthly research paper meeting at Rippling.