Challenge to opportunity: Supporting Boise’s tech talent after Intuit’s site closure | Opinion

Processing the news of the Intuit Boise site closure and employee layoffs was incredibly difficult. Not as hard as it was for the employees impacted, but as a past TSheets and Intuit executive, I experienced so many emotions as I processed the news. I had difficulty sleeping and woke up a couple of days later with a fresh perspective and a story I wanted to share.

In 2014, I was early in my journey as the TSheets (now called QuickBooks Time) product and engineering leader. The business had around 20 employees, and TSheet’s marketing head Jen Hetherington’s organization had figured out the acquisition machine so we could start hiring. From many years of work and tech volunteer efforts, I had a relatively large network of local engineers, designers and product managers.

It was time to start scaling our organization, and I was beating the streets, talking to everyone I could. I talked to hundreds of potential candidates that year. My pitch was refined, and I was passionate. The work environment was amazing, the mission and co-founders were inspirational, and people loved the customers we were serving. But great people were reluctant to make the jump to leave their current jobs and join us. I even had a few commits to join, but they would receive a large bonus or a counteroffer and chose to stay put.

Our big break was when a local company, acquired by a Fortune 500 company years earlier, closed its Boise office. Suddenly, instead of working my tail off to get a single employee, I had 50 asking if we had job openings. A gift!

We stretched our budget to hire two engineers immediately, and I spent weeks talking to more, teeing them up to not get comfortable at their next gig. I really wanted to hire them as we continued to scale. Those we couldn’t find room for spread out to other local companies and flourished.

At the time of the Intuit acquisition, we had over 280 employees, and at the height of Intuit’s employment in Boise, we had over 400. This was true job creation in the Treasure Valley. These employees created a $100 million or more in annual recurring revenue software-as-a-service business and an award-winning company culture, both amazing accomplishments. Along the way, they built incredible skills, grew as individual contributors and leaders, and gave back to their community.

Intuit’s contribution to the Boise tech ecosystem over the last seven years should not be forgotten nor understated. Intuit hired hundreds of employees and brought incredible training, compensation packages, commercial real estate investment and charitable giving to the Treasure Valley. Even as proud as we were of the TSheets scale at the time of our acquisition, employees now got to branch out and work on additional Intuit products, and truly understand and learn how to work on software products at scale.

To everyone impacted by the site closure, you are all amazing, and I have no doubt you will land on your feet and thrive. Take some time to reflect and be bummed and process, but then wake up and get moving. You’ve got this!

A group of colleagues have come together to host an Intuit Boise Tech Talent event on Aug. 6 and connect local businesses with this amazing talent pool. If you’re an employer looking to hire, the list of job functions available is broad. The Intuit Boise team consisted of software engineers, mobile engineers, designers, product managers, customer support and success professionals, L&D, content designers, marketing, data, and sales experts.

If you are an employer and would like to join the event, please contact me directly at idtechcommunity@gmail.com.

Here we stand today with an amazing gift to local Boise area companies: a workforce with incredible experience and drive, high performers ready for their next adventure. Just like the gift TSheets received in 2014, the cycle continues, and a new generation of Boise companies will get the employees they need to thrive, create more jobs, and fuel our tech ecosystem.

This story was originally published July 24, 2024 at 4:00 AM.