Enhance customer experiences with Apollo GraphOS


<p>We are experiencing a transformative period in application development, driven by the rise of AI across industries. This shift has made the API layer crucial for delivering innovative and personalized applications. At Apollo GraphQL, we aim to equip API platform teams with the tools they need to leverage GraphQL and GraphQL federation, helping them stay ahead in this AI-driven world.</p>



<p>Our customers and partners frequently highlight the need to maximize their APIs&#8217; value in a way that is easy to use, scalable, and drives bottom-line growth. They want to increase productivity, improve the developer experience, and enhance software quality, all while delivering fast and tailored digital experiences. Organizations like Expedia, The New York Times, and Wayfair choose our GraphOS platform to achieve these goals.</p>



<p>In light of these trends, <a href="http://www.apollographql.com/blog/apollo-graphql-announces-major-graphos-update-enhancing-observability-and-performance-for-enterprise-scale-graphql-federation">our latest GraphOS release</a> is a significant step forward. It improves observability and performance for enterprise-scale GraphQL federation and simplifies running a GraphQL platform with <a href="https://www.apollographql.com/docs/graphos/enterprise/supergraph-architecture-framework/operational-excellence/">operational excellence</a>. Gartner predicts that by 2026, over 30% of the increase in API demand will come from artificial intelligence and tools using large language models.<sup data-fn="3ded1729-df22-4efb-b57d-4a37b20c9290" class="fn"><a href="#3ded1729-df22-4efb-b57d-4a37b20c9290" id="3ded1729-df22-4efb-b57d-4a37b20c9290-link">1</a></sup> From building a chatbot, to AI-enabled personalization or transactions, or what’s to come in the future with autonomous agents, organizations require a resilient platform like GraphOS to connect their APIs and deliver a self-service graph that can power any number of applications.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We are excited to also welcome to our team <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferhewlette/" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferhewlette/">Jennifer Hewlette</a> as Chief Marketing Officer. Jennifer brings over twenty years of experience in building enterprise marketing strategies from pre-revenue to public high-tech companies such as DataRobot and Cisco. At DataRobot, known for its generative and predictive AI platform, she led marketing, go-to-market enablement, and education, focusing on delivering exceptional value to customers and partners. Joining us at a time of our rapid global growth and extensive cross-industry market adoption, her expertise in category expansion and deep understanding of AI’s business impact will be instrumental in advancing our mission to bring the benefits of our supergraph technology to help developers help the world.&nbsp;</p>



<p>In Jennifer’s words:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p>“I have spent the majority of my career forging the new – new markets, new technologies, and new ecosystems. Apollo GraphQL is already a leader beloved by developers with more than 25M downloads each month, and trusted by hundreds of enterprise customers like Netflix, Indeed, Intuit, and Wayfair. The technology can help any brand that strives to deliver personalized, performant digital customer and AI experiences. I look forward to working with our customers, prospects, and ecosystem partners to accelerate business value and create new experiences.”</p>
</blockquote>



<p>We have welcomed seasoned veterans to our <a href="https://www.apollographql.com/leadership">leadership team</a> over the last year, with a rich pedigree in building world-class developer and enterprise companies from Atlassian, Twilio, Stripe, and Grammarly. These leaders have a remarkable track record of crafting customer-focused strategies that drive growth and innovation. Their expertise will be crucial as we help our users maximize the value of their API strategies and expand our market presence.</p>



<p>We&#8217;re excited to share these developments with our community and deepen our engagement with our users, customers, and partners. I’m delighted to invite you to join us in New York City this fall for <a href="http://www.graphqlsummit.com">GraphQL Summit 2024</a>. At this event, we’ll unveil our latest innovations and explore the future of GraphQL. It’s a unique opportunity to connect, learn, and collaborate as we push the boundaries of what&#8217;s possible in application development.</p>



<p>Join us in welcoming Jennifer Hewlette as our new Chief Marketing Officer as we embark on this exciting new chapter!</p>


<ol class="wp-block-footnotes"><li id="3ded1729-df22-4efb-b57d-4a37b20c9290"><a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2024-03-20-gartner-predicts-more-than-30-percent-of-the-increase-in-demand-for-apis-will-come-from-ai-and-tools-using-llms-by-2026">https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2024-03-20-gartner-predicts-more-than-30-percent-of-the-increase-in-demand-for-apis-will-come-from-ai-and-tools-using-llms-by-2026</a> <a href="#3ded1729-df22-4efb-b57d-4a37b20c9290-link" aria-label="Jump to footnote reference 1">↩︎</a></li></ol>

Embracing The Future And Welcoming Our New CMO


<p>Here at Apollo, we’re on a mission to help developers help the world. It’s an ambitious goal, and we have an incredible team of smart, kind, thoughtful, and technically savvy humans helping us achieve it – one graph at a time. While many companies are instilling return-to-office policies, we’re operating the same way we always have: as a globally distributed company focused on creating a place where everyone can do their best work. For our employees, part of doing their best work means working from home.</p>



<p>Much like our services, we aren’t a monolith. While being distributed works for us at Apollo, each of our teammates have their own reasons why. Whether it’s being able to balance time with kids, raise a new puppy (and be home for lunchtime dog walks), or take on a leadership role in tech that wouldn’t be available in their small town, we’re building an inclusive company with folks from all over.</p>



<p>Today we’re meeting five of our teammates and learning more about why they’re thriving at Apollo. First up, let’s get to know <strong>Chandrika Srinivasan</strong>, a Senior Staff Product Manager who’s helping drive Apollo Router from London, England.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Chandrika-3-1-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-23745" srcset="https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Chandrika-3-1-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Chandrika-3-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Chandrika-3-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Chandrika-3-1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Chandrika-3-1-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Chandrika-3-1-1200x800.jpg 1200w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Chandrika-3-1-1980x1320.jpg 1980w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



<p><strong>You’re new to working remotely. How’s the change been for you so far?</strong></p>



<p>Working remotely has been a complete game-changer. For seven years I was commuting two hours each way. Sometimes when you’re in a situation you think “ah, it’s not that bad! I’m doing Duolingo, reading, and watching <em>Game of Thrones</em>.” Once I started working from home, I started to realize what a massive difference it makes. What I hadn’t appreciated until then was the extra time it brings me with my daughter. She was 18 months old when I began working from home and I was thinking “wow I would have missed out on all of this.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>She’s not going to need me to get her dressed and take her to school eventually. But right now, during these formative years, working in an office five days a week is non-negotiable. In fact, one of my coworkers and I joke about hitting my Bath Time OKR with my daughter.</p>



<p><strong>What’s a typical day like for you?&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>I’m a triathlete. Sometimes my day is focused on working with my immediate team in EMEA and sometimes I know that my day is going to be super heavy after lunch, if I have a lot of California-timed meetings. In those cases, I tell my team I’m going to start a little later and I begin my day with a workout, which is a great way to start the day. I also take my daughter swimming every Friday. She thinks she’s a triathlete, too, because once she biked to swim then she ran back from the pool.</p>



<p><strong>Do you feel connected to your team?</strong></p>



<p>I think we just have to be a little more creative and we find ways where we can connect with each other. The engineering manager I pair with has cultivated an atmosphere where we openly talk about how we’re doing or, if we just want to hang out with someone, we can start a<em> </em>Slack huddle and work on our own things in silence<em>.</em>&nbsp;</p>



<p>One thing I’ll add, a lot of distributed companies tend to be America-centric, but every single Apollonaut has been so sensitive about time zones. People will ask multiple times if meeting times are ok and my boss in California will offer to start early. </p>



<p></p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="768" src="https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Daniel-3-1024x768.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-23747" srcset="https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Daniel-3-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Daniel-3-300x225.jpg 300w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Daniel-3-768x576.jpg 768w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Daniel-3-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Daniel-3-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Daniel-3-1200x900.jpg 1200w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Daniel-3-1980x1485.jpg 1980w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



<p></p>



<p>Then there’s <strong>Daniel Abdelsamed</strong>, a Senior Developer Experience Engineer, living in Ohio, US.</p>



<p><strong>Hey, Daniel. Good to see you again. Remind us, did you work from home before joining Apollo?</strong></p>



<p>Before Apollo, I was working for a hardware company, so working from home wasn’t an option. You can’t fix machines remotely. I used to spend an hour plus of my day commuting, so Apollo being distributed was a huge draw. Plus, I don’t have to wear headphones all day and can listen to music or meetings from my speakers. The only people I’ll annoy are my cats, and they don’t seem to mind.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Do you think there’s a difference between a partially and fully distributed company?</strong></p>



<p>Apollo is built around asynchronous work. With some companies where some people are in office, some hybrid, and some fully distributed, the culture can be very jarring because it’s like you’re almost working in three totally separate companies. Apollo’s dedication to fully distributed work gives me confidence that it’s going to continue to be a remote position.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>We heard you have a sweet office set-up. Tell us more.&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>I love that I get to work in my own space with my own computer set up. I’ve got the right headphones, the right monitors, and can arrange my space in a clutter-free way that helps me focus. I use two monitors: one is a normal-sized monitor and the other is this super ultra-wide monitor that I do most of my day-to-day work on. It’s able to fit a spreadsheet as large as the eye can see!&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>What’s the vibe like with your team? Do you touch base often?</strong></p>



<p>I feel really well connected to my team. One thing I like is that on Fridays, we have a coffee chat where we get together and talk about anything that’s not work-related; from what we’re doing this weekend, to how gravitational waves work. </p>



<p></p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="917" src="https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Hannah-Taylor-crop-1024x917.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-23758" srcset="https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Hannah-Taylor-crop-1024x917.jpg 1024w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Hannah-Taylor-crop-300x269.jpg 300w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Hannah-Taylor-crop-768x688.jpg 768w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Hannah-Taylor-crop.jpg 1163w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



<p></p>



<p>Next up, let’s hang out with <strong>Hannah Taylor</strong>, an Account Exec (AE) currently living in Oregon, US.  </p>



<p><strong>Hannah, when did you first start working remotely?</strong></p>



<p>I began working remotely during lockdown, and I quickly noticed I was getting more work done in a shorter time frame when working from home. I’m a people person, I enjoy chatting with people, so it was easy to get distracted in an office environment.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Being distributed brought you a big change, didn’t it?</strong></p>



<p>Working from home gave me the flexibility I needed to feel good about getting a dog. I had been thinking about it for a long time, but I like to go to the gym right after work and it would have made having a dog hard. Now I have the ability to work from home, take the dog on walks during lunch, then go straight to the gym after work – all that <em>and</em> my dog hasn’t been alone all day. When I think about the future and the possibility of a family, the flexibility of working remotely is really important to me.</p>



<p><strong>You were already working remotely, so what made you decide to interview at Apollo?</strong></p>



<p>I joined a company remotely, and then as things began opening back up after the pandemic, they asked for the team to be in office. This would have meant moving halfway across the country. Initially, I was okay with the idea, but I soon realized I didn’t really want to move. My friends and family are here, and I really like Oregon. While I liked the company and thought moving might be a great experience, I knew I would ultimately want to return here. Once I really sat with the idea, I knew that if returning to the office was required, I would look for something else.&nbsp;</p>



<p>I was casually talking to friends in my area about this return to office choice and one of them mentioned that a recruiter from one of my previous jobs was now hiring at Apollo. So interviewing here kind of landed in my lap. It felt like the universe saying, “here you go, here’s what you’re asking for. You can stay in Oregon, be remote, and do the work you wanted.” The universe was right.</p>



<p></p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="909" src="https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Livia-and-Astro-cropped-1024x909.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-23760" srcset="https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Livia-and-Astro-cropped-1024x909.jpg 1024w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Livia-and-Astro-cropped-300x266.jpg 300w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Livia-and-Astro-cropped-768x682.jpg 768w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Livia-and-Astro-cropped-1536x1363.jpg 1536w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Livia-and-Astro-cropped-1200x1065.jpg 1200w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Livia-and-Astro-cropped.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



<p></p>



<p>Speaking of getting a dog, let’s chat with <strong>Livia Bretz Thompson</strong>, Senior Diversity Sourcer on the Talent team, who lives in Florida, US. </p>



<p><strong>Let’s start with the important stuff: Tell us how you got your dog, Astro!</strong></p>



<p>My husband and I had been talking about getting a dog for the longest time, but we never thought it was the right time. Once I started working from home, we started talking about the idea seriously. Right after I joined Apollo, we went to San Diego for Summit (our annual conference for API platform engineers and leaders), and to my surprise, Apollo had a puppy corner where you could play with puppies between sessions.&nbsp;</p>



<p>My husband was in San Diego with me, so I started sending him photos. We were debating… are we really considering this? We’ll have to travel back to Florida with a puppy. So he came to the puppy corner and there was this specific puppy that was so chill, and we decided to adopt him. We named him Astro because we wanted to have a space theme name to remind us that we got him during the Apollo event.</p>



<p><strong>Has Astro become a part of your regular work day?</strong></p>



<p>Yeah, if I’m not in a meeting, he’s always with me. I can let him out to run around in the backyard and I can take breaks to play with him a bit and then come back to my desk. Having him around definitely improves my mood. I feel I’m more productive, and I’m more physically active. I take him for a walk in the mornings and during my lunch.</p>



<p><strong>Do you still feel connected to your team?</strong></p>



<p>I do! Not just our team, but the company offers different ways to connect – virtually, offsites, and our annual Company Kick-off where we bring the whole team together. I know I can drop time on someone’s calendar to have a quick meeting. Also, I love our cooking channel in Slack. I’m always there sharing recipes and looking to get inspired by what coworkers are cooking up. </p>



<p></p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="575" src="https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Andrew-small-town-1024x575.png" alt="" class="wp-image-23753" srcset="https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Andrew-small-town-1024x575.png 1024w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Andrew-small-town-300x169.png 300w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Andrew-small-town-768x431.png 768w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Andrew-small-town-1536x863.png 1536w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Andrew-small-town-2048x1151.png 2048w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Andrew-small-town-1200x674.png 1200w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Andrew-small-town-1980x1112.png 1980w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



<p></p>



<p>Our Head of Security, <strong>Andrew Smiley</strong>, keeps us safe from Nova Scotia, Canada.</p>



<p><strong>Now, Andrew, you don’t exactly live in what we’d call a “tech hub.”</strong></p>



<p>No, I live in a very small town in Nova Scotia, so I would be looking at over an hour drive each way to Halifax if I wasn’t working remotely. Pre-pandemic we lived in the suburbs of Halifax and I bought my current house as a renovation project. Around that time my son suddenly said he wouldn’t mind trying out small town living, so we took advantage of that and moved out here to the rural area. It happens to be very close to where I grew up.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>What do you love about your area?</strong></p>



<p>The fact that it isn’t a tech hub. I can walk down the street here and decompress after work. It’s a typical small town with firefighters and mail people, a bakery literally around the corner. So it’s very easy to leave work behind after I’m done.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>How does being distributed work for you?</strong></p>



<p>I can structure my day in a style that works for me. My team likes to tease me that I’m on too much, but I’m not really. I’ll do a little bit, check on my staff and communications, take my kid to school, come back, have breakfast, do some work, go for a walk, and then check into things on the West Coast. The flexibility – and acceptance of that flexibility – is really great.&nbsp;</p>



<p>I also think being distributed levels the playing field. When I first started working, I was at a company with nine floors in the building. If you wanted to talk to the executives, you would have to brave the stairs and go up to their floor and knock on their door, and if they threw you out, it was going to be embarrassing. But when you’re distributed, everyone’s just a little two-inch square on the screen. I find it very inviting to reach out to anyone in the company any time.</p>



<p><strong>Was Apollo being distributed part of the draw for you?</strong></p>



<p>Yes, because I knew I wasn’t moving to San Francisco. I like the fact that there’s no office at all. Sometimes when companies have some people in office, you can often feel like you’re outside the sphere of influence if you’re distributed. There’s a remote-first mentality prevalent at Apollo. Working for Apollo felt like the big leagues. At Apollo people are joining from the kinds of companies you see in the headlines. Without having to leave my area, I get to see the trends being set, not read about them in a book a year from now.</p>



<p><em>We’re hiring! Check out our </em><a href="https://www.apollographql.com/careers"><em>open roles</em></a><em> and follow us on </em><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/apollo-graphql/mycompany/"><em>LinkedIn</em></a><em> and </em><a href="https://x.com/apollographql"><em>X</em></a><em>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</em></p>


Life at Apollo featured image with the title on it

Across the universe: Meet five Apollonauts thriving in a distributed world


<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><em>GraphQL Leader Adds Executives from Atlassian and Twilio; Aditya Phadke Appointed Chief Customer Officer and Rob Brazier Named VP of Product</em></li>



<li><em>Unwavering GraphQL Adoption and Customer Focus Continue to Drive Major Product Enhancements at Apollo GraphQL&nbsp;</em></li>
</ul>



<p>Apollo GraphQL, the supergraph company, today announced it has made two significant additions to its leadership team, welcoming Aditya Phadke as Chief Customer Officer and Rob Brazier as VP of Product. These new appointments build on the successes felt in 2023, as GraphQL saw a rise in usage and success within API platform teams for globally recognized brands like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b78Q7qY4IpI&amp;list=PLpi1lPB6opQzUOqG3QroLLN06FF-Q_uhX&amp;index=7">Netflix</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNqcow1psEA&amp;list=PLpi1lPB6opQzUOqG3QroLLN06FF-Q_uhX&amp;index=24">Wayfair</a>, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB-THCI0Mw0&amp;list=PLpi1lPB6opQzUOqG3QroLLN06FF-Q_uhX&amp;index=36">Intuit</a>.</p>



<p>Phadke joins Apollo GraphQL from Atlassian, where he played a crucial role in unlocking customer success and building its pre-sales &amp; post-sales customer motions as it scaled from a startup to a public market leader worth $62B; he will be responsible for building the post-sales group fostering long-term customer relationships and evolving the customer adoption journey. Brazier most recently joins from Grammarly, where he led their developer platform efforts and, prior to that, was the VP of Product at Twilio, where he focused on Twilio Flex, Voice and Video, and other product lines for the company. He brings his background in platforms, developer-facing products and cloud, alongside experience with top-down and bottom-up sales motions, to further advance all aspects of the Apollo GraphQL product portfolio that is seeing significant adoption as the leader of GraphQL products in the market. Additionally, Robbie Petrie joined as Chief Financial Officer earlier in 2023 from Twilio to round out the leadership team.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-pullquote"><blockquote><p>“In 2024, brands are delivering personalized, AI-driven applications across multiple channels to keep up in today&#8217;s market. They’re finding that it’s hard to do this at the pace today’s world requires without a new approach to APIs. Rather than building handwritten experience APIs for each customer interface, enterprises are taking a platform approach with GraphQL so they can gain composability, developer velocity, and efficient integration of diverse cloud resources. And that’s why they’re turning to Apollo GraphQL as the creators of the industry standard GraphQL platform for the future,” said Geoff Schmidt, CEO and co-founder at Apollo GraphQL. “We are expanding our executive team to better service our customers and meet demands for their long-term growth and success. Aditya brings a track record of nurturing customer relationships and Rob brings years of developer platform success and expertise. Both make ideal additions to the Apollo GraphQL leadership team to help developers build the next generation of applications and deliver profound, efficient, and meaningful user experiences.”</p></blockquote></figure>



<p>Half of the Fortune 100 embraced GraphQL in 2023 and Apollo GraphQL experienced 40% growth in new customers. Significant customers include <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJRgtuSMV_Q">Ford Credit, Sony Playstation,</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w07Z572q3kg&amp;list=PLpi1lPB6opQzUOqG3QroLLN06FF-Q_uhX&amp;index=2">Realtor.com</a>, who along with 40 others, talked about how Apollo GraphQL is helping their businesses at the GraphQL Summit in 2023. Apollo GraphQL provides an API integration layer across teams with its supergraph – a GraphQL layer that sits atop existing APIs and enables developers to fetch data from a single endpoint. By building a supergraph with the Apollo GraphOS platform instead of handwriting a sprawl of countless backends-for-frontends or experience APIs, software teams and platform engineers can focus less time on service aggregation or orchestration and more on the features that fuel growth. Apollo GraphQL’s product portfolio and services now include:&nbsp;</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://www.apollographql.com/blog/federated-subscriptions-in-graphos-real-time-data-at-scale"><strong>Real-time data at scale with federated subscriptions in GraphOS</strong></a> &#8211; GraphOS has subscriptions which allow developers to deliver up-to-the-second updates to application experiences without writing new code, regardless of how many APIs they consume.</li>



<li><strong>Comprehensive platform approach to API Security</strong> &#8211; GraphOS allows platform teams to deliver velocity at scale without compromising security and compliance. GraphOS Authorization now centrally <a href="https://www.apollographql.com/blog/centrally-enforce-policy-as-code-for-graphql-apis">enforces policy as code for GraphQL APIs</a>. Enterprises can also eliminate unauthorized access to services with persisted queries, which provide <a href="https://www.apollographql.com/blog/graphos-persisted-queries-are-generally-available">a registered list of known queries</a> that can access the graph in production.&nbsp;</li>



<li><strong>API conformance and governance </strong>&#8211; As GraphQL gains traction among more and more developers, enterprise teams must provide tools to ensure code quality and consistency at all times. API platform owners can now automate and streamline code review with <a href="https://www.apollographql.com/blog/standardize-graphql-schema-linting-policies-with-graphos">schema linting in GraphOS</a>.</li>



<li><strong>Significant performance gains and capabilities with Apollo Router</strong> &#8211; Apollo Router, a high-performance GraphQL gateway and query planner, has successfully undergone rigorous testing for over a year in highly demanding production environments. The significant investments made in enhancing runtime performance and efficiency reflect Apollo’s commitment to delivering maximum cost savings and ensuring low-latency user experiences.</li>



<li><a href="https://www.apollographql.com/blog/announcing-official-apollo-federation-support-for-net-with-hot-chocolate-and-federation-2"><strong>Official Support for Microsoft .NET</strong></a><strong>:</strong> Apollo GraphQL recently furthered its commitment to the Microsoft ecosystem by announcing formal support for a .NET library, ensuring that over 6 million .NET developers can effectively contribute to a supergraph. Apollo GraphQL now supports 40+ GraphQL frameworks, enabling diverse teams to contribute to their API platforms.</li>
</ul>



<p>Apollo GraphQL has received recognition by third-party research firms and saw significant growth in its vibrant community:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Apollo GraphQL was named a GraphQL API Sample Vendor for 3 consecutive years in the <a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/4564799">Gartner® Hype Cycle™ for APIs, 2023</a>.<sup>1 </sup>Additionally, a Gartner survey found that “API design and API management skills” were rated one of the most highly important software engineering skill, second only to application security skills.<sup>2</sup></li>



<li>Apollo GraphQL’s developer adoption continues to grow with 25M open-source downloads per month and 5T requests served in GraphOS. Additionally, GraphQL is on the rise as an emerging skill with 4K new jobs posted on LinkedIn.com requiring it, 21k users completing courses on Apollo GraphQL’s <a href="https://apollographql.com/tutorials">learning platform Odyssey</a>, and 4k users earning certifications as an Apollo GraphQL Developer.</li>



<li>Apollo GraphQL was named one of <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90847317/most-innovative-companies-enterprise-2023">Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies in Enterprise of 2023</a>.</li>
</ul>



<p>To learn more, visit <a href="http://www.apollographql.com">www.ApolloGraphQL.com</a> and the below resources.</p>



<p><strong>Further Resources:</strong></p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://www.apollographql.com/supergraph/">Learn</a> more about supergraphs</li>



<li><a href="https://www.apollographql.com/graphos/">Build </a>a GraphQL API platform today</li>



<li><a href="https://www.apollographql.com/tutorials/certifications/apollo-graph-professional/learning-path/">Become certified </a>as an Apollo GraphQL developer</li>



<li><a href="https://discord.com/invite/yFZJH2QYrK">Join</a> the Apollo GraphQL Community on Discord</li>
</ul>



<p><sup>1 </sup>Gartner, <a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/4564799">Hype Cycle for APIs</a>, 2023, By Mark O&#8217;Neill, John Santoro, July 25, 2023. Gartner and Hype Cycle are registered trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Note: Apollo GraphQL was referred to as Apollo in the 2022 and 2021 Gartner Hype Cycle for APIs and was recognized for Graph APIs.</p>



<p><sup>2 </sup>Gartner, <a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/4539999">Top Software Engineering Skills and Skill-Building Techniques</a>, By Shivica Mathur, July 18, 2023.</p>



<p><em>Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.</em></p>



<p><strong>About Apollo GraphQL</strong></p>



<p><a href="https://apollographql.com">Apollo GraphQL </a>helps developers help the world by providing a better API platform across teams. Apollo’s open-source software is downloaded 25M times per month and its commercial GraphQL technologies power the most innovative brands today. Teams at Netflix, Snap, and the New York Times ship personalized, omnichannel experiences faster with a supergraph – a self-service GraphQL platform that spans any number of backend services. Serving over 5T requests in 2023, the Apollo GraphOS platform simplifies API development with workflows and infrastructure to build, test, and ship supergraphs at any scale. Based in San Francisco, Apollo is backed by Insight Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Matrix Partners, and Trinity Ventures. Learn more at: <a href="https://www.apollographql.com">https://www.apollographql.com</a>.</p>


This image displays a headshot of Aditya Phadke and a headshot of Rob Brazier, new executives on the Apollo GraphQL team. Consistent with the visual image, the text displayed says "Welcome to Apollo GraphQL!"

Apollo GraphQL Expands Leadership Team To Meet Demand for GraphQL in the Enterprise


<p>A question I get a lot from folks within Apollo and outside the company alike is: Why isn’t <a href="https://www.apollographql.com/docs/graphos/explorer/explorer/">Apollo Explorer</a> open source? <a href="https://github.com/graphql/graphiql">GraphiQL</a> is open source and is the tool that helped a lot of us write our very first GraphQL queries. Explorer is like a super-charged GraphiQL, so therefore it should be open source too, no?</p>



<p>In the spirit of open source, I thought I’d write down my philosophy on this topic here in a quick blog post for y’all.</p>



<p>As the creators of Apollo Client, Apollo Server, <em>many</em> open source tools for GraphQL, and MeteorJS before that, we know exactly what it looks like and what it takes to do open source well. We have had eras at Apollo where we were really proud of our OSS status and reputation, and eras where we couldn’t keep up maintenance and just became flat out embarrassed at how we let our repositories languish.</p>



<p>When we were a younger company, we tended to open source most things by default. We were so excited about GraphQL that we wanted to help it spread by building as many tools for the ecosystem as we could muster. Along the way, we’ve realized that when something becomes popular, and people start relying on it, it becomes increasingly more work to continue to maintain and evolve. It’s a big responsibility to maintain a popular open-source repository, and we bear this responsibility with heart and pride, but it also takes a lot of work. There were many GraphQL projects that we started but couldn’t keep up with and ultimately decided to give away to other maintainers in the community for that reason.</p>



<p>That said, Apollo has always been and will always be fully committed to the health and betterment of our core open-source projects: Apollo Client, Apollo Server, and many others. To make this commitment, we employ several teams of engineers to work on these projects full-time. We make no direct revenue from this work, but we fully recognize the importance these projects hold to our customers and the GraphQL community which is why we continue to make this commitment. It’s a full-time job for multiple people to maintain a popular repository, let alone continue to innovate within it.</p>



<p>…let’s bring this back to Apollo Explorer now 😃</p>



<p>We set out to build Explorer because we had a vision for how easy we wanted it to be for the world to write GraphQL queries, and we wanted to pursue that vision as quickly and directly as possible. We decided to build Explorer within GraphOS Studio, the UI for our SaaS platform, because this is where we already wrote code day-to-day and we had everything we needed with respect to our design system, build system, deployment pipeline, CI/CD, etc. already set up.</p>



<p>We’ve discussed at many different times what it would look like to extract Explorer’s code into its own package that we could publish on NPM and then use in Studio, and to be completely frank, it’s just too much work. Also, to be even more frank, we really like the flexibility of what a small team can accomplish when all it takes to roll out an update globally is a simple web app deploy, and we aren&#8217;t bogged down with version management, backwards compatibility, and publishing to NPM.</p>



<p>That said, we firmly believe that Explorer is the best GraphQL IDE in the world and we want it to be just as accessible to the world as an open-source IDE like GraphiQL. So the route we’ve opted to achieve this is to publish Explorer’s code to a CDN every time we deploy a new version of Studio. This gives us the best of both worlds:</p>



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li>It lets you embed Explorer on your website or in your developer portal, so your users can use it to access your GraphQL API.</li>



<li>It lets you fully customize the network requests sent from Explorer to your GraphQL endpoint, in case you want to add custom headers or include a Login button to authenticate.</li>



<li>It lets us continue to maintain Explorer at the highest level of quality and roll updates out to you all as quickly as possible.</li>
</ol>



<p>There are several ways to embed Explorer in your website:</p>



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li>Set the preference in your <a href="https://www.apollographql.com/docs/graphos/explorer/embed-explorer#embedding-on-the-apollo-server-landing-page">Apollo Server config</a></li>



<li>Embed <a href="https://www.apollographql.com/docs/graphos/explorer/embed-explorer#embedding-on-an-arbitrary-webpage">in a React app</a> using our @apollo/explorer package</li>



<li>Embed <a href="https://www.apollographql.com/docs/graphos/explorer/embed-explorer#embedding-on-an-arbitrary-webpage">using vanilla Javascript</a> via our &lt;script&gt; tag</li>
</ol>



<p>For us, Explorer is a true labor of love and our expression of how we want the world to interact with GraphQL queries. If you&nbsp;ever have suggestions or feature requests for it, please bring them to our <a href="https://github.com/apollographql/apollo-studio-community">Studio community repo</a>. We read everything that comes in even if we can’t respond or act quickly.</p>



<p>This has been my quick 2 cents. Thanks for reading! Here’s an embedded Explorer with the GraphOS Platform API just for fun:</p>



<div style="width: 100%; height: 500px;" id="embedded-explorer"></div>
<script src="https://embeddable-explorer.cdn.apollographql.com/_latest/embeddable-explorer.umd.production.min.js"></script> 
<script>
  setTimeout(() => new window.EmbeddedExplorer({
    target: '#embedded-explorer',
    graphRef: 'SpaceX-pxxbxen@current',
    endpointUrl: 'https://api.spacex.land/graphql/',
    persistExplorerState: false,
    initialState: {
      document: `query ExampleQuery {
  company {
    ceo
  }
  roadster {
    apoapsis_au
  }
}`,
      variables: {},
      headers: {},
      displayOptions: {
        showHeadersAndEnvVars: false, 
        docsPanelState: 'closed', 
        theme: 'dark',
      },
    },
  }),1000);
</script>


Why isn’t Apollo Explorer open source?


<p>Whether you’re buying gifts on <a href="https://wayfair.com">Wayfair</a>, booking a trip on <a href="https://expedia.com">Expedia</a> or <a href="https://booking.com">Booking.com</a>, or looking for houses on Zillow, you’re using a supergraph. It’s the kind of technology that is rarely seen or talked about by the general public. Supergraphs impact not only how quickly developer teams can move, but the pace at which organizations can introduce and innovate products and services.&nbsp;</p>



<p>That’s why Apollo is proud to announce that we were featured as <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90847317/most-innovative-companies-enterprise-2023">Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies in Enterprise of 2023</a>. It’s an honor to be among peers who are pushing technology forward at such a rapid pace. This list included anything from AI-powered copywriters to platforms that provision compute solutions that are 35 times faster than what we see now. We are proud not only of our amazing team for this accomplishment, but for the customers that put their trust in us. This group of pioneers decided it was time to build apps in a new and better way. Their progress fuels us to bring our technology to more people around the globe.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#the-next-1000-graphs" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="the-next-1000-graphs"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a><strong>The next 1000 graphs</strong></h2>



<p>Apollo sought to get 100 flagship customers on a supergraph, and we accomplished that. But that’s not enough. A supergraph can ensure that your identity is unified across your healthcare group to ensure you get the care you need. Graph technology makes it easier for a bank to roll out new lending offerings to any user with a connected mobile device. Apps help people solve problems, and a supergraph is a core technology that empowers developers to build better apps in less time. We are excited for Apollo’s next chapter, and we hope you are too.</p>



<p></p>


Apollo GraphQL is one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies in Enterprise of 2023


<p>For those of you who know me best, I certainly don&#8217;t take things at face value. I take a measured approach when I make decisions, especially when it comes to making my next career move. I often get asked how I always “pick the winners”. Here&#8217;s how I went about the selection process for joining Apollo six months ago, and a quick update of where I&#8217;m at today.</p>



<p>The first question I ask myself when I’m looking for a new company to join: “what’s the next big thing?” I have conversations with customers about up-and-coming technology mega-trends they’re seeing, and I learn what makes their technology so transformational. I tap into my personal network — mentors, VCs, and of course friends and family. I consolidate a stack of great companies into an organized list, and then I use tools to qualify and substantiate my findings. The two tools I use the most are Crunchbase and CB Insights because they make it easier to filter and sort through the data that is most important to me: who are the company&#8217;s founders, executive team, lead investors, what exits have they had, how much money has been raised, and when.</p>



<p>As a final step, I’ll narrow down my shortlist to the Top 5 Stand Out companies and then move to a more low-tech approach &#8212; literally a sheet of paper listing out all of the Pros and Cons for each. By the end, the answer was jumping off the page&#8230; go to Apollo!</p>



<p>I thought I’d share the details about why I joined Apollo, and also give you a quick update about how the first 6 months have gone.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#why-i-joined" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="why-i-joined"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a>Why I joined</h2>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#1-my-customers-told-me-to" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="1-my-customers-told-me-to"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a><strong>1. My customers told me to!</strong></h3>



<p>When I’d spoken with customers about the strategic initiatives they’ve been working on, the conversation almost always started with them telling me about their back-end microservices and APIs, often because of major limitations that were holding them back. A few times I heard, “George, the business has given our technology group a problem statement and asked us to solve for it, but we can&#8217;t because of existing technical debt, heaps of custom code, and the limitations of REST.” I made the connection that Apollo is the only platform on the planet that can manage and secure the full lifecycle of APIs and GraphQL from start to finish, and if I&#8217;m being honest, my gut was already telling me Apollo was where I needed to go.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#2-durability" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="2-durability"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a>2. Durability</h3>



<p>I had a memorable discussion with a VP of Engineering at an unnamed Fortune 500 company. He oversees his company’s Graph and what he said stuck with me, “I’ve been with my company for 18 years and in that time we’ve thrown away code and completely re-platformed at least 3 times. In the past 5 years which layer has had Durability? Not the front end which we re-wrote every 2 or 3 years, and not even our services API’s which we moved to the cloud and modernize frequently. Which layer has Durability? It’s been our Graph — it’s naturally growing and evolving, and it’s clear that it’s here to stay.”</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#3-total-addressable-market-tam" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="3-total-addressable-market-tam"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a><strong>3. Total addressable market (TAM)</strong></h3>



<p>Every enterprise company on the planet develops software. That software then touches every one of your customers and employees; it is your brand and it matters. Throughout Apollo’s interview process it was clear to me that this was a company that understood the significance and responsibility of this (more than any company I’ve ever talked to.) I made a joke to my wife that “If <a href="https://a16z.com/2011/08/20/why-software-is-eating-the-world/">software is eating the world</a> then Apollo is starting to look like a friendlier version of Jaws.”</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#4-the-worlds-largest-brands-use-apollo" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="4-the-worlds-largest-brands-use-apollo"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a><strong>4. The world’s largest brands use Apollo</strong></h3>



<p>Companies like Walmart, eBay, Netflix, and <a href="https://www.apollographql.com/customers/paypal/">PayPal</a> don’t add a critical infrastructure layer without doing some serious due diligence. At PayPal specifically, they needed to innovate faster on their payment platform and improve the overall user experience. Legacy REST infrastructure was inadequate to meet their goals. Mark Stuart, Director of Engineering with PayPal put it perfectly, “We found that UI developers were spending less than one-third of their time actually building UI. The remainder of that time was spent figuring out where and how to fetch data, filtering/mapping over that data, and orchestrating API calls.”</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#5-backed-by-the-best" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="5-backed-by-the-best"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a>5. Backed by the Best</h3>



<p>In August 2021, <a href="https://www.apollographql.com/blog/announcement/apollo-raises-130m-to-pioneer-the-graph-for-app-developers/">Apollo raised a $130M Series D round from some of the very best in the business: Insight Ventures and existing long-time investor, Andreessen Horowitz</a>. This new round is an exciting milestone for Apollo, now valued at over $1.5B. That’s a 10X jump in valuation since I’ve joined with a line of sight to our next 10X growth.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#what-happened-after-6-months-at-apollo" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="what-happened-after-6-months-at-apollo"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a>What happened after 6 months at Apollo?</h2>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#1-i-learned-what-apollos-customers-are-really-doing-with-the-graph-and-its-mind-blowing" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="1-i-learned-what-apollos-customers-are-really-doing-with-the-graph-and-its-mind-blowing"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a>1. I learned what Apollo’s customers are <em>really</em> doing with the Graph and it’s mind blowing</h3>



<p>It’s even better than I thought. We landed new logos with great companies like eBay, Warner Media, and Pinterest. Customer retention is over 190%! Those using the Graph are expanding, and quickly. It’s becoming more and more clear that every company that builds software will need a Graph. Network effects are already developing as companies want their vendors on their Graph. This is the sort of thing that makes selling fun for me.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#2-i-sold-a-bunch-of-stuff" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="2-i-sold-a-bunch-of-stuff"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a>2. I sold a bunch of stuff</h3>



<p>On my end, I got to work with great companies like eBay, Hy-Vee, Mastery Logistics, and more. eBay’s Velocity Initiative is purely focused on increasing developer velocity while also increasing the quality of mobile-first digital experiences. In 2021 they had a “technology-led re-imagination of their stack”. The North Star of the Velocity Initiative is to increase the amount of value they’re able to deliver to their customers (all 185M buyers and 19M sellers). Apollo and the Graph is a new strategic layer of their infrastructure, and ultimately will help them deliver on those value and speed-based business outcomes.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#3-i-got-promoted" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="3-i-got-promoted"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a>3. I got promoted!</h3>



<p>Before I joined, I knew Apollo was growing, and fast. I knew there was going to be a ton of opportunity for my own career growth at a company scaling this quickly. I was given realistic expectations as an Account Executive, and under the insightful leadership of Rachel Hammond, Jim McCracken, and John Siebert, I was given every opportunity to succeed and grow into the Director role. I now lead Sales for our Central US Region (And I am <a href="https://www.apollographql.com/careers/job?id=92ebd14e-e991-43da-a64b-b03e8e9bdfe7">hiring</a>!)</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#conclusion-what-you-see-is-what-you-get" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="conclusion-what-you-see-is-what-you-get"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a>Conclusion: What you see is what you get</h2>



<p>Six months in and I can say with confidence that the future is extremely bright here at Apollo! The trajectory we’re on is something any salesperson would be excited to be a part of. I am thrilled about the company and wanted to share my experience and process with others who might be interested in knowing more about my Unicorn Company Selection Process, it’s the same formula I used to pick my last 3 start-ups (Okta, Box, and Vontu which have all found their way quickly into the Public markets.)</p>



<p>If you’re curious and want to know more about what Apollo does, reach out to us. If you are a customer or a prospective customer, thank you for entrusting Apollo with your business &#8212; this is only the beginning. Lastly, if you’re a prospective colleague, come join us; what are you waiting for?</p>


My first 6 months at Apollo GraphQL


<p>Apollo GraphQL is busy! With millions of downloads of our open source product every week, customers like Walmart, Peloton, and Netflix (just to name a few), and our <a href="https://www.apollographql.com/blog/announcement/apollo-raises-130m-to-pioneer-the-graph-for-app-developers/">recent $1.5 billion valuation</a>, this is an exciting time to be working at Apollo. If you are looking for a 2022 internship at a company tackling interesting projects and building the future of GraphQL technology, you want to be at Apollo.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#making-a-real-world-impact" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="making-a-real-world-impact"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a>Making a real world impact</h2>



<p>Our interns do not work on small side projects that never see the light of day. They are in the thick of it, working side by side with more senior members of our teams on the projects and problems that are of immediate importance to our enterprise customers and open source users. Our interns are treated like full-time team members: they come to the vital team meetings and company all-hands, they are hands-on in our product and process, and — if the internship goes well — they could be looking at a full-time offer letter at the end of the internship. (All of our 2020 interns received and accepted full-time offers!)</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#this-isnt-our-first-rodeo" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="this-isnt-our-first-rodeo"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a>This isn’t our first rodeo</h2>



<p>Apollo has five years of successful full-stack engineering internships under our belt. <a href="https://www.apollographql.com/careers/interns">Check out some of the work our past interns have done!</a> For the first time, we have expanded our program for 2022 and are looking for interns across multiple functions and teams. Here is a little bit of information about each of our internships:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list"><li><a href="https://www.apollographql.com/careers/job?id=c6cc1557-acf5-4000-82d0-2086044eaf4d">Engineering</a>. Open to Winter, Spring, Summer, or Fall 2022 interns. Our Engineering teams are looking for people interested in the following: full-stack, frontend, or backend product engineering; distributed systems engineering; libraries/framework engineering; ops work, and data science. Engineering interns can be recent graduates from university or boot camps or rising seniors graduating no later than Fall 2023.</li><li><a href="https://www.apollographql.com/careers/job?id=e03a59f9-6a93-498c-84d7-e79c46debf46">Design</a>. Open to Spring, Summer, or Fall 2022 interns. Our Product Design team is looking for someone with a portfolio showcasing a strong foundation in UX/UI design, visual design, and/or interaction design, as well as case studies that demonstrate your design process. Design interns can be recent graduates from university or boot camps or rising seniors graduating no later than Fall 2023. </li><li><a href="https://www.apollographql.com/careers/job?id=0872044e-83b2-403b-9160-cfeb600883e6">Product Management</a>. Open to Summer 2022 interns currently enrolled in an MBA program with an expected graduation of 2023. Our product team is looking for people interested in customer research, data analysis, and pairing with our current PMs.</li><li><a href="https://www.apollographql.com/careers/job?id=73ab8393-643a-4305-bf3c-8075f6950854">Sales</a>. Open to Winter, Spring, or Summer 2022. Our Sales Development team is looking for someone who is interested in learning the top-of-funnel sales motion, prospecting for customers, and working with our Account Executives on qualifying and building sales pipeline. This internship is open to someone who is looking to make a pivot in their career to sales or someone in school who will graduate by the beginning of the internship in 2022.</li><li><a href="https://www.apollographql.com/careers/job?id=7ce17598-2b37-4b2d-a70b-754ca7ae2543">Marketing</a>. Open to Spring and/or Summer 2022. If you are in school, there is an option to work part-time during school in Spring and move to full-time in Summer 2022. The Demand Generation team is looking for somone excited to learn content creation, building out nurtures, and how to run campaigns. This internship is open to someone who is looking to make a pivot in their career to sales or someone in school who will graduate no lalter than Fall 2023.</li></ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#work-from-almost-anywhere" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="work-from-almost-anywhere"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a>Work from (almost) anywhere</h2>



<p>All internships are virtual and open to people anywhere in the United States and Canada. Apollo GraphQL is also dedicated to bringing in talent that is historically underrepresented. We have a globally-used product and we want to help cultivate the next generation of tech workers.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#come-work-with-us-at-apollo" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="come-work-with-us-at-apollo"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a>Come work with us at Apollo</h2>



<p><a href="https://www.apollographql.com/careers/">Apply</a>, and let’s have a conversation to see if Apollo is right for you!</p>



<p>We take our commitment to our interns seriously. We want to provide you with a great opportunity to learn and grow. If you enjoy working on fast-paced, cutting-edge technology and want to interact with seasoned team members during your internship, Apollo is where it’s at!</p>


Announcing Apollo Internships for 2022


<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow"><p>This is the second part of a two part series. If you missed the first post, you can <a href="https://www.apollographql.com/blog/life-at-apollo/what-is-it-like-to-interview-with-apollo-part-1-of-2/">read it here</a>.</p></blockquote>



<p>In the first post, we talked about how we carefully design and define our process to put our candidates in the best position to succeed, with an emphasis on:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list"><li>How consistency creates equity.</li><li>Helping our candidates feel as comfortable as possible so they can show us their best stuff.</li><li>How important it is for Apollo to be on point to answer all of your questions as you go through our interview process. We know you’ll have plenty of choices when you decide on your next place to work, and we want you to be able to evaluate us as thoroughly as possible.</li></ul>



<p>In this post, we’ll wrap up with phases 3 and 4 — interviewing and offers. You’ll see how we’re different from some companies in how transparent we are throughout the entire process. We’ll explain why it’s important for us to be direct and honest, and how we take extra time getting to know you.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#phase-three-its-interview-time" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="phase-three-its-interview-time"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a>Phase three: It’s interview time</h2>



<p>The interview basics are pretty straightforward. We give extra attention to the organized execution of these steps (being on time and prepared), to ensuring candidates have time to interview <em>us</em>, and when we’re asked a hard question, answering it honestly.</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="353" height="357" src="https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Part-3-Illustration-3-1.png" alt="" class="wp-image-9162" srcset="https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Part-3-Illustration-3-1.png 353w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Part-3-Illustration-3-1-297x300.png 297w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 353px) 100vw, 353px" /></figure></div>



<p><strong>Step 1: Screening</strong><br>The first conversation in the interview process is usually a quick role alignment call with a recruiter, which includes time for candidates to ask questions about Apollo. In fact, just about every interview you have with Apollo will give you time to ask us questions so you can better evaluate if Apollo is right for you. In this first call, we love to talk about our culture (we’re proud of it!) and to give people an update on the company trajectory.</p>



<p>Next, a call with the hiring manager will cover some of the most important role competencies (as discussed in part 1 of this blog), with time left for you to learn more about the role. If there are technical aspects to a role, we will have another interview before we bring you to the final interview stage.</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignleft size-full is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Part-2_Illustration-2.png" alt="" class="wp-image-9154" width="327" height="337" srcset="https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Part-2_Illustration-2.png 358w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Part-2_Illustration-2-291x300.png 291w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 327px) 100vw, 327px" /></figure></div>



<p><strong>Step 2: Final interviews (aka, the virtual onsite)</strong><br>A note on Apollo’s distributed culture: We’ve had it since day one. We’ve always had the philosophy of hiring the best people in the world, and that has meant hiring people just about wherever they live. That being said, we&#8217;ve learned that timezones on the opposite side of the planet don&#8217;t work well, which is why members of a given team tend to be within a few time zones of each other. Where we&#8217;ve landed is that we have an office for people who prefer one, and a distributed friendly policy as well. This gives us access to both pools of people, which is a balance that has worked well for our team.</p>



<p>As a distributed-flexible company, all of our interviews are over video or phone. The final “virtual onsite” interviews comprise the bulk of our competency interviews. Each interview will be designed to test for a specific skill, and candidates will have the previously mentioned “blurbs” to help them prepare. We like to include interviewers that you will be working with, so you can get to know the people on your team a bit better as you interview.</p>



<p>As with all of our interviews, we always like to leave time for you to ask questions about Apollo. If there’s a cheat code I can give you, it’s to come prepared with a couple of good questions for each of your interviewers. We’ll be honest with you about what we have, and what we don’t. No company is perfect, and that includes Apollo.</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="386" height="347" src="https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Part-2_Illustration-1-1.png" alt="" class="wp-image-9160" srcset="https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Part-2_Illustration-1-1.png 386w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Part-2_Illustration-1-1-300x270.png 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 386px) 100vw, 386px" /></figure></div>



<p><strong>Step 3: Deep dive</strong><br>This is the <em>getting to know you</em> interview we referenced above, and the best way to describe it is that it’s a “life story interview.” We’ve received a lot of positive feedback from our candidates on this interview, and it’s something fairly unique about our process. One of the most important results we get from this interview is that a manager will leave this interview with an understanding of how to make their future hire successful.</p>



<p>It’s a mutually beneficial result when you’re successful in your job at Apollo. We try to get off on the right foot by gaining an understanding of the circumstances that led to your best performance in the deep dive. Talking about these topics gives us an understanding of someone’s self-awareness, and how growth-oriented someone might be. In the end, we learn a lot about how we can best motivate people, and hopefully how to avoid demotivating people as well.</p>



<p>The feedback we hear most often from our candidates is an appreciation that we took the time to get to know them. (We love that feedback.)</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#the-final-phase-offers" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="the-final-phase-offers"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a>The final phase: Offers</h2>



<p>When we make an offer, it’s an exciting time. It means that we’ve looked at hundreds of candidates, and now we’re approaching the finish line. We approach our offers as a conversation with our candidates. Our goal is always to find the win-win where the candidate is being given an offer that they’re excited about that we know to be fair market value.</p>



<p>Remember in part 1 of this post when we talked about candidates getting to ask their questions? (I might have mentioned it once or thrice already.) When it’s time for you to make a final decision on whether to accept an Apollo offer or not, you will already have asked a lot of questions from each interviewer. We’re open to more. The worst-case scenario for both Apollo and a candidate is that you arrive here and learn that the job and company are different than what we represented. We work really hard to minimize such a situation, because it’s bad for the person joining us, and it’s also bad for Apollo.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#a-few-words-on-compensation" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="a-few-words-on-compensation"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a>A few words on compensation</h3>



<p>I’m sure companies have different opinions on what equitable compensation means, so let’s get a little more specific. Our north star for our compensation is consistency. We start by investing in multiple compensation tools and use them to design compensation bands that are competitive with companies of our size and stage. We carefully level prospective hires during their interviews and then apply our bands consistently.</p>



<p>We are very aware of pay disparities present in the tech industry across racial and gender demographics. We refuse to have pay disparities at Apollo.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#summary-and-a-little-gratitude" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="summary-and-a-little-gratitude"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a>Summary (and a little gratitude)</h2>



<p>We pulled back the curtain so you could better understand how we think about hiring at Apollo. We’ve carefully designed this process over the last 5 years, and many of the positive iterations have been brought to us by our own candidates. If you are one of the people that has given us feedback over the years, <em>thank you</em>. We’ll keep asking how we can be better, and that’s a journey that never ends.</p>



<p>If you’re interested in Apollo, check out <a href="https://www.apollographql.com/careers/#positions">our open roles</a>. If you don’t see one that fits you, reach out to us anyway. The timing might not be perfect, but we love to make long-term connections with great people like yourself.</p>



<p>Considering Apollo? Check out some of these links to learn more about us:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list"><li><a href="https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Apollo-Graph-Reviews-E893757.htm">Apollo Glassdoor page</a></li><li><a href="https://www.apollographql.com/careers">Careers at Apollo</a></li><li><a href="https://www.apollographql.com/careers/team">The Apollo team</a></li><li><a href="https://www.apollographql.com/blog/life-at-apollo/what-is-it-like-to-interview-with-apollo-part-1-of-2/">What is it like to interview with Apollo? (part 1 of 2)</a></li></ul>


What is it like to interview with Apollo? (part 2 of 2)


<p>We’ve all been there. You’re interviewing for a company that has a job you’re very interested in. But you have no idea what to expect in the interview process. You’re wondering; what will this process actually be like? How much time will it take? Should I prepare? How <em>much</em> should I prepare? Will I get a chance to ask my questions so I can learn more about the company? {Narrator: Gosh, I sure hope so.}</p>



<p>This is the first of two “interviewing at Apollo” posts that outline our interview process from start to finish. For anyone considering Apollo as a future employer, the goal of these two posts is to help you get comfortable with our interview process before you have your first interview.</p>



<p>This first post will cover the first two pieces of our interview process:</p>



<ol class="wp-block-list"><li>How we prepare our interviewers internally to create alignment and ensure a consistent process.</li><li>How we put our candidates in the best position to succeed by preparing them for what’s to come.</li></ol>



<p>In the next post, I’ll describe how we get everyone on our interview panel on the same page to ensure we have an equitable interview process.</p>



<p>Let’s kick off with how we define, design, and strategize the role.</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright size-full is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Illustration-1.png" alt="" class="wp-image-9143" width="273" height="275" srcset="https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Illustration-1.png 333w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Illustration-1-298x300.png 298w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Illustration-1-150x150.png 150w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 273px) 100vw, 273px" /></figure></div>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#phase-1-define-design-strategize" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="phase-1-define-design-strategize"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a>Phase 1: Define, design &amp; strategize</h2>



<p>Consistency in hiring is something we work hard to create. A consistent process creates fairness by ensuring interviews are the same for every candidate.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#step-1-define-the-role" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="step-1-define-the-role"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a><strong>Step 1: Define the role</strong></h3>



<p>Where does any new hire begin? Let’s start with an adage; “If you don’t know what you are looking for, you are unlikely to find it.” Step 1 in the hiring process is the hiring manager defining what they are looking for in their new hire. We create a document called an MOC, which outlines the Mission, the Outcomes, and the Competencies for the role.</p>



<p>The mission is the primary purpose of the role. For a recruiting role, that is making hires. For a salesperson, it’s bringing in new customers and revenue. The outcomes are the documented expectations for a hire to deliver in their first year of work at Apollo, and beyond. The key here is to avoid creating a laundry list of “necessary skills”, and instead we want to evaluate whether the person can deliver the needed outcomes. Later we’ll use these outcomes to help create onboarding plans, but onboarding is a blog post all on its own.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#step-2-design-the-interviews" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="step-2-design-the-interviews"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a><strong>Step 2: Design the interviews</strong></h3>



<p>Next, let’s talk about why choosing the right competencies is so important. Competencies are the critical skills and attributes needed to deliver the outcomes we’re looking for. Note that I said &#8220;critical&#8221;. If you have too many, you create a unicorn hire that you’ll never find. That’s why most roles at Apollo have four or five competencies. Choosing the appropriate competencies has additional importance because we use the competencies to design all of our interviews. It’s paramount for each interviewer to design questions that allow a candidate to put their best foot forward. We promise not to ask you how many golf balls you can fit into a 747.</p>



<p>Most of the skills a candidate possesses are earned as they deliver outcomes in their career, so we’ll design interview questions to test how deep that knowledge goes. That said, you can’t judge a book by its cover, and you can’t judge the depth of someone’s knowledge by looking at how many years they have on their resume.</p>



<p>Ah, but what about attributes? Sometimes we’re not requiring prior knowledge of a skill, and instead, we’re looking for aptitude. This practice helps us open the aperture on our requisitions, which supports another key goal in our hiring process; diversity and inclusion. We will often design an interview to test for someone’s ability to learn a skill. This was especially important five years ago when we were hiring people for something called “GraphQL” that very few people had experience with.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#step-3-prepare-our-interviewers" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="step-3-prepare-our-interviewers"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a><strong>Step 3: Prepare our interviewers</strong></h3>



<p>Our interviewers are chosen by the hiring manager for their ability to assess the competencies they are assigned. The ability to assess competencies comes with experience, and we shorten the learning curve by utilizing interview shadowing. If you see more than one person in your interview, it’s usually because a new interviewer is learning how to best conduct that interview in the future. After an interviewer has conducted an interview 10 or more times, they become adept at identifying if an interview performance was strong or not.</p>



<p>Even before the recruiting team starts talking to candidates, we have a hiring panel kick-off. Why? We never want an interview panel confused about what we’re looking for. Every single interviewer has to be on the same page with the hiring manager, or you can end up with disagreement when their skills might be exactly what the hiring manager is looking for.</p>



<p>All of the time we put in early on is ensuring we’ve built a fair, consistent process. This is why we want all of our candidates to have as similar a process as possible.</p>



<p>Now let’s get into what your experience as a candidate will be like.</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignleft size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="328" height="328" src="https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Illustration-2.png" alt="" class="wp-image-9145" srcset="https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Illustration-2.png 328w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Illustration-2-300x300.png 300w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Illustration-2-150x150.png 150w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 328px) 100vw, 328px" /></figure></div>



<p></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#phase-2-preparing-our-candidates" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="phase-2-preparing-our-candidates"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a>Phase 2: Preparing our candidates</h2>



<p>First of all, why are we doing this? Many companies seem to revel in their infamously challenging interview processes. From gotcha questions, to double-digit interviews, to multiple months of interviews, I’ve heard it all from candidates over the last 20 years.</p>



<p>At Apollo, I’ll just say that we take a bit of a different tack. Everyone here is committed to designing a process that puts our candidates on equal footing with our team. Yes, we want to hire the best people in the world who are excited to do great things at Apollo. But we want to do it in a way that we can be proud of. Putting candidates in a position to show us their best is what this is all about. If we get a chance to see that in your interviews, we know we can put you in that same position once you’ve joined us.</p>



<p>Here are three simple things we’ve done to put our candidates in a position to succeed:</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#1-blurbs" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="1-blurbs"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a>1. Blurbs!</h3>



<p>We all feel a little weird using the word “blurb”, but they’re an important part of preparing our candidates. A blurb is a short description of each interview a candidate will have. We’ve found that candidates love this aspect of our interview process. The feedback we most often hear is, “You really put my mind at ease prior to the start of my interviews.”</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#2-organize-the-heck-out-of-everything" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="2-organize-the-heck-out-of-everything"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a>2. Organize the heck out of everything</h3>



<p>Organization might seem like a small thing, but I’ve had candidates tell me how they feel cared for in our process because of our attention to detail. When we send your interview schedule, you will be emailed our now semi-famous blurbs, but along with them you also get a link to each interviewer’s LinkedIn. If there’s a change in the schedule, we’re on top of it. Oh, and your Zoom links will be correct, which is awesome when Zoom is working the way we expect.</p>



<p>If a candidate wants to prepare and get more comfortable with who they will be speaking with, it’s all right there in one place. We’ll also schedule a quick check-in call with a recruiter to answer any last questions you might have before you start your interviews.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#step-3-honesty-and-integrity" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="step-3-honesty-and-integrity"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a>Step 3: Honesty and integrity</h3>



<p>There will be times when a candidate is hoping a job offers something it doesn’t. For example, someone who is hoping to be a manager within a year. We will never promise something that we can’t guarantee. I often tell candidates that we would never want to trick them into joining Apollo, only to have them find out it’s not the right fit. I’ve seen companies do that in the past, and it almost always ends badly, with the newly hired person leaving after maybe 5 or 6 months after joining. That’s bad for the candidate (and their resume), and it’s bad for Apollo.</p>



<p>That’s why we always make sure there is extra time built-in for you to ask us questions. We know that you have plenty of options, and we want to make sure you can evaluate Apollo to see if it’s the right place for you. It’s our job to give you the information you need to make an informed decision, and that’s what we’ll do, even when it means we’ll lose a strong candidate who is looking for something we can’t offer.</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="344" height="347" src="https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Illustration-3.png" alt="" class="wp-image-9150" srcset="https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Illustration-3.png 344w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Illustration-3-297x300.png 297w, https://wp.apollographql.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Illustration-3-150x150.png 150w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 344px) 100vw, 344px" /></figure></div>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="#conclusion" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="conclusion"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="aal_svg" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a>Conclusion</h3>



<p>It’s hard for people to make empowered decisions without all of the relevant information. We want you to know as much about us as possible so you can make an informed decision on whether Apollo is right for you. We do this to empower our candidates, but also because we really do care if people are happy when they join Apollo.</p>



<p><a href="https://www.apollographql.com/blog/life-at-apollo/what-is-it-like-to-interview-with-apollo-part-2-of-2/">Part two of this series</a> covers Apollo’s interview and offer process. </p>



<p>You can also check out some of these links to learn more about us:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list"><li><a href="https://www.apollographql.com/careers">Careers at Apollo</a></li><li><a href="https://www.apollographql.com/careers/team">The Apollo team</a></li><li><a href="https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Apollo-Graph-Reviews-E893757.htm">Apollo Glassdoor page</a></li></ul>



<p></p>


Life at Apollo