Life at OPENLANE: Q&A with Pedro Perone, Engineering Team Lead, OPENLANE US Marketplace
In this Q&A, Pedro Perone shares his incredible journey at OPENLANE, how his culture is embraced and what he’s most proud of.
What has your journey at OPENLANE looked like?
My journey at OPENLANE has been incredible and rewarding. I joined BacklotCars in 2019, and we were a dozen highly motivated engineers in a single office. Then, we were acquired by OPENLANE (then known as KAR) in 2020, and I joined a much larger company, and never stopped learning and growing. I’m lucky to say I love my job.
What’s something you are most proud of during your time here?
As software developers, we spend a considerable amount of our time working on aspects of the platform’s code that are very important, but tend to fly under the radar (e.g., tests, performance optimizations, code refactors, migrations, etc.). Those are rewarding in their own right, and we certainly appreciate their value internally. But every once in a while we will work on large features, visible changes to the platform, things that are noticed and have a sizable impact on users’ (both internal and external) experiences. Nothing compares to the satisfaction of seeing your feature live on the platform, receiving positive feedback and realizing your work had a measurable impact on an important metric.
What do you like most about working at OPENLANE?
What I like most about working at OPENLANE is, by far, the people. I’m constantly amazed by the quality of the folks I get to work with every day. We have incredible, capable professionals, whom I learn from every single day, but more importantly, we have a group of kind, friendly and helpful people that are honestly the number one reason I feel so lucky to be where I am. I don’t mean just the people I work closest with: everyday I’ll come in contact with new people across the organization on Slack, and everyone is patient and friendly. I don’t think that’s the norm everywhere, but rather that we created and nurtured a culture that values and cares for these traits and attitudes. And that, above anything else for me, makes OPENLANE a great place to work.
What is the best career advice you’ve ever heard?
When I was offered this opportunity back in 2019, I was working at an established software company. They tried to convince me to stay by scaring me a little bit about joining a startup. And my wife, who was then pregnant with our first child, told me to follow my instinct. Not sure that counts as an example of career advice, but I did, and I never looked back.
Tell us about the work LATIN@OPENLANE does.
I truly value how OPENLANE has established employee resource groups, empowering these different communities throughout the organization. LATIN@OPENLANE, in particular, initially helped me recognize the significant size of our community—it was much larger than I had perceived. This, of course, fosters a sense of inclusion and belonging, which is perhaps more crucial now than ever. We recently celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month, and for a while you’re surrounded with colors, foods and sometimes music that makes you feel a bit closer to home. Being so far away from home, I can say I value it all a lot more than I did before I moved here.
