When Eric Barrow arrived at Pennymac, his career took flight.
Barrow had always had an interest in trying new things — even if they weren’t in his job description. But up until that point, he’d never worked at a company that embraced the notion that good ideas can come from anyone.
At Pennymac, Barrow started on the business side of things, but he always had a real interest in technology. He soon came up with an idea to modify an existing website to consolidate reporting. He’d never built a website before, and had no reason to think his bosses would encourage it. Yet Barrow was overjoyed when management gave him the opportunity to test his skills.
“I just started working on the website,” Barrow said, with a smile. “And nobody stopped me.”
The openness at Pennymac was striking and inspiring. “At former employers, building a website without being a web developer would have gotten me axed pretty quick,” Barrow said. “But at Pennymac, they embraced it. This experience started my career journey into tech, and enabled me to take part in a larger project soon after, dealing with an application called the Report Inventory Management System (RIMS).”
Barrow, who is now SVP of application development, discovered that his specific experience at Pennymac was not unique, but rather indicative of the company’s overall mission and philosophy. Barrow’s story is an ideal example of Pennymac’s reputation: It combines the scale and backing of a large public company with the innovative, freedom-loving soul of a startup.
To learn more about the work culture environment at Pennymac — and the stories of three employees who used their initiative to help change the mortgage industry landscape — we sat down with Barrow, Scrum Master Priya Prasad and Managing Director of Products Tracie Hunter.
Eric, the story of how you built that website is fascinating. Can you go into greater detail?
Barrow: Sure.
I wanted to help where I could, and I noticed that our departmental website, Iserv, wasn’t optimal at the time, so I took a shot at upgrading it. After completing the Iserve upgrade, I was asked to lead a project that actually resulted in the company’s first serverless application that would be called the Report Inventory Management System (RIMS).
We didn’t know enough about servers to actually build a website that relied on them, and at the time, serverless was just becoming a thing. Storing an index file in an S3 bucket was way easier than setting up NGINX. So kind of by coincidence and lack of skill, we ended up playing with serverless technologies. RIMS was completed and is still in use at Pennymac today — it aggregates all the reports in the company while drawing intelligence about those reports.
The report inventory management system I built is still in use at Pennymac today.”
How did you get permission to make this website and have it go live?
Barrow: In this particular instance, my boss had a working relationship with the CEO. He brought me in to present what we had built, as well as the concept of consolidating and drawing intelligence from disparate reporting. From there, it got approval and senior management throughout the organization began to adopt it and that’s how it organically came together.
After that, I moved from the business sector and into technology, where I am now involved with the decision forum and architecture review cadence. There’s a lot of hands-on interaction at all levels and the process is truly about quantifying ideas at Pennymac. Ideas can be thought of by anyone and presented to anyone. So at any given time, I could potentially say to our Chief Technology Officer, “Hey, Lior, I have this idea.” And then I would present it.
This just recently happened, actually. I was presenting the idea for building a generalized automation framework. Now it’s going to go through the decision forum where we present more holistically to everybody who might be affected, and we’ll see what happens. It’s a great environment to work in!
Priya, you also say that you work in a great environment as a scrum master. What’s it like, and what makes it unique or similar to a startup?
Prasad: One thing about Pennymac: We don’t build people around processes — we build processes around people.
There are a lot of elements that put us in the same mindset as a startup, including structure. Our scrum teams are self-organized and managed according to agile methodology to get the work done. We have complete creative autonomy in designing features to meet our business needs and we never stop innovating. We’re always looking for ways to enhance our product, whether that be through direct integrations with our partners or through advanced UI/UX technology.
To keep things fun our scrum teams are named after popular sci-fi entities, action figures, and even rivers — it’s totally up to our teams! Our communal areas are decorated with movie memorabilia. We do lots of other interesting things to align resources and make it a vibrant, engaging and collaborative culture. All of those elements, even on a structural level, contribute to the exuberant atmosphere.
I should add that the fact that we have the backing and support of a successful enterprise is also evident in our daily activities. If we need a resource or are blocked in development/testing, leadership is one step away. We’re able to raise issues or concerns and get the help we need quickly. We’re nimble and open-minded like a startup, but less constrained because of our financial prowess.
Tracie, great to meet you. Pennymac is hiring across the nation right now. Why is that?
Hunter: First and foremost, we have a number of game-changing initiatives that are being worked on to support our business goals. Pennymac started here in Southern California and while we’re more concentrated here, our product and technology has expanded to multiple locations across the United States. In addition to our main tech site in Agoura Hills, California, over the last few years, we have expanded to include major product and technology hubs in Plano, Texas and Raleigh, North Carolina, along with a number of positions that are full-time remote. We recognize that to provide the best opportunity for key talent, expanding our talent search nationwide is critical to our recruiting success.
Obviously, the atmosphere at the company is unique, but how do you get new talent to Pennymac and keep them there?
Barrow: You asked Tracie about retention, and to me this is one of the biggest things Pennymac can offer. If you’re hiring people that are stoked about technology, Pennymac has the technological resources of an enterprise company for engineers to use. The company allows them to use all the different things they see — for example, they allow front-end engineers to play around in the back end, and they don’t let anyone get pigeon-holed. People get pretty excited about the possibilities. That's definitely been my experience and it’s been a great one working at Pennymac.
Hunter: The diversity and inclusion of our talent across all teams is a critical component that carries forward with our recruiting efforts. I think it’s inherent in how we operate and search out new talent. A key area of focus with new (and existing) talent includes being deliberate to ensure that all team members are rallied around our business goals. We deliver technology to support our business goals, not just for the sake of building technology. Connecting our goals to the mission and work that our teams execute against day after day helps to build a unique culture. In addition, we have very visible leadership who provide support and guidance, but also allow teams to take accountability in delivering. Lastly, collaboration is not just a statement but is put in action across our teams. Some co-locate together, others collaborate between sites, but working together brings a sense of belonging and connection. I think all those things help to make people excited about being at work and solving challenging problems, while making it a fun experience along the way. Even during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, we were able to add a lot of original and fun elements to keep everyone connected to our great culture. The other element to keeping our talent is ensuring that we are investing in them, including career pathing opportunities, training, coaching and professional growth. The alignment of providing the opportunity to engage in rewarding work while growing professionally is key for our continued success with talent acquisition and retention.
