# Why I joined Asana: R.J. Aquino, Engineering Manager - The Asana Blog > R.J. Aquino is an Engineering Manager at Asana. Read more about his journey from San Francisco to Vancouver and why he chose to work at Asana. Source: https://asana.com/inside-asana/why-i-joined-asana-r-j-aquino-engineering-manager ## Why I joined Asana: R.J. Aquino, Engineering Manager _Welcome to our monthly “Why I joined Asana” series! Every month, we talk with Asanas across our teams and offices—from Dublin to Sydney—to get to know the people inside the company and learn why they chose to work here._ [R.J. Aquino](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rjtaquino/?originalSubdomain=ca) is an Engineering Manager who started his Asana journey five years ago. He joined Asana as a Product Engineer right out of college, and has since worked on multiple Engineering teams. Today he works out of our Vancouver office as a manager helping us build our newest development center. Read more about R.J.’s [#teamasana](https://twitter.com/hashtag/teamasana?src=hashtag_click) story below! ### How did you become interested in working at Asana? One of Asana’s first engineers came to my college campus to give a tech talk, and I was impressed by the technology, culture, and team. I’d heard great things about the [Asana engineering team](https://blog.asana.com/category/eng/) and from my own research and use of the product at a previous internship, I knew they had a clear product vision, growing [user base](https://www.google.com/search?q=asana+customers&oq=asana+customers&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i60j0.2546j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8), and [strong business trajectory](https://news.crunchbase.com/news/asana-crosses-100m-arr-after-eight-quarters-of-accelerating-growth/). It was also important to me to join a team large enough that it had interesting product and engineering challenges, but small enough that I could work on the most important challenges at the company. I ended up joining Asana as an Infrastructure Engineer right after graduation and then switching to Product 18 months later.  ### What team are you currently on, and what are some of the most interesting aspects of your role? I’ve had the opportunity to work on in variety of roles and teams since first starting at Asana five years ago. After starting on the Infrastructure team I moved to Product Engineering where I spent several years working on core features like [custom fields,](https://blog.asana.com/2019/07/new-custom-field-updates/) growth and adoption experiments, and platform integrations like our [Slack integration](https://blog.asana.com/2018/05/ways-use-asana-slack-integration/). During this time I also had the chance to serve as both a team lead and a technical lead in San Francisco. Currently, I’m an Engineering Manager in our [new Vancouver](https://www.straight.com/tech/1261681/why-so-many-silicon-valley-companies-are-moving-vancouver)development center.  As a member of the landing team in Vancouver, I wear many hats. Initially I partnered with the team in San Francisco to make sure our team in Vancouver had clear, impactful work to focus on. Now I work on scaling our Engineering team for international growth and also work directly with our engineers in a tech lead capacity to help them build new features.  ### What was your journey to becoming an Engineering Manager? Asana believes in [empowering](https://wavelength.asana.com/team-empowerment-trust/) individuals to take [complete ownership](https://blog.asana.com/2017/12/distributed-responsibility-engineering-manager/) over their work since this often results in faster execution and decision making. When I was a new engineer at Asana, I had the opportunity to drive technical projects, lead initiatives, and run a Product Engineering team in [partnership with a Product Manager](https://blog.asana.com/2017/10/product-managers-engineers-develop-great-relationship/). During our annual [Roadmap Week](https://wavelength.asana.com/work-plans-high-level-objectives-roadmap-week/), I found myself drawn to meetings about growing our Engineering team and the company as a whole. Eventually, I made the choice to pursue Engineering management, which has allowed me to continue contributing to the overall organization. When I’m not focusing directly on the output of an engineering team, I’m working on our hiring and onboarding practices and management processes so we can support continued growth. The processes that worked when we had 30 engineers won’t scale when we have 300, so we’re constantly iterating and improving while making sure the experience for every engineer is engaging and exciting. ### What are you most excited for as you grow in your role at Asana? Being on the landing team in [Vancouver](https://www.straight.com/tech/1261681/why-so-many-silicon-valley-companies-are-moving-vancouver) is an exciting opportunity for me. I’ve seen Asana grow from 70 employees to more than 500. Now I’m back in a 10-person office and excited about continuing to build our team over the course of the next year. ### What’s it like to use Asana the product everyday? I really appreciate the [transparency](https://blog.asana.com/2018/07/transparency-201-know-audience/) we have as an organization. Usually companies become more siloed as they grow, but our product makes it so easy to see different projects and initiatives that are going on across the business. When our Engineering team is building a feature, we coordinate all of our Product, Engineering, and Marketing work in Asana. It’s easy to see what’s going on, regardless of what team or office we’re in! ### What principle or value have you carried with you along the way, and where did you first hear it? One of Asana’s core [Engineering principles](https://blog.asana.com/2016/05/asana-engineering-values/) is, “Fix problems, even if they aren’t yours.” As we’ve grown, we’ve continued to embody this value and I believe it helps us still feel small and connected. If a Product Engineer notices an issue with our infrastructure, they help investigate. If someone realizes a vulnerability in our internal script, they write and check in a fix. I’ve definitely held onto this value over the years and it’s helped me form connections with new Engineers and teammates in all of our offices around the world. ### If you could give a new Asana one piece of advice, what would it be? Stay curious. At Asana, we have a Shipping and Launches project that tracks every feature and improvement being built by different teams across the company. A new Asana should follow that project to stay up-to-date on all of the exciting work happening in the company. I would also advise them to check in on other teams’ Slack channels, like #prod or #uzerops, to see what what they’re talking about and how they’re collaborating. Successful cross-functional collaboration requires a strong understanding of each others’ motivations. It’s up to each of us to get curious and interested! Our team is growing fast in Vancouver! Our new development center is home to Asanas across Product, Engineering, Design, and UX. We’re excited to keep growing our team with people who care about building great products and scaling culture. Come see what we’re all about at [https://asana.com/jobs/](https://asana.com/jobs/). - [擴展 LunaDb，我們內部的宣告式資料載入系統](/zh-tw/resources/scaling-lunadb) 工程 #### 平台工程師 在 Asana，我們建立了一個名為 LunaDb 的資料載入系統，作為我們 Web 應用程式的骨幹。 儘管名字如此，但它並非資料庫。 相反地，它是一個類似 GraphQL 的系統，用於以宣告式方式擷取資料，基本上是一種載入最新版本資料和所有未來更新的方法。我們最初在 2015 年推出 LunaDb，作為對後端基礎架構的徹底重寫¹。 此新系統的核心元件是同步 ... - [Asana 如何讓我成為更有效的工程經理](/zh-tw/inside-asana/asana-makes-me-effective-engineering-manager) 工程 #### 資料基礎結構工程經理 As an engineering manager, I need to keep track of so many things. I have my own personal to-dos that I need to prioritize, making time for focused work while also handling incomi ... - [擴展我們的無效管線：第 1 部分](/zh-tw/inside-asana/scaling-invalidation-pipeline-part-1) 工程 #### 平台工程師 At Asana, our invalidation pipeline is a key part of implementing near-realtime reactivity in the webapp. Reactivity is how each-and-every Asana tab keeps up-to-date with the lat ... - [Why I joined Asana: R.J. 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