In our continuing series highlighting the talented people behind Nextdoor’s technology, we sat down with Cidney Weng, an iOS Software Engineer on our Entity Pages team. Here, Cidney shares insights into her daily work, the skills that drive her success, and how she’s helping build features that connect communities.
Q: What does your typical day look like as a member of the ProdDev team?
A: As an iOS engineer on the Entity Pages team, my day typically consists of a combination of team meetings, broader iOS or cross-functional meetings, and independent coding. We’ll usually have a standup meeting with the other people working on the same project, and we’ll go over updates and progress as well as have product discussions, design reviews, and work through any kinks that come up.
In addition, I might have a meeting such as the biweekly iOS community meeting, a 1-1 with a team member, or an organization-wide all hands. The rest of the time will be coding! This can either look like feature development, bug fixing, code refactoring, code reviewing, etc. It’s a great mixture of collaboration with team members and time to build exciting projects!
Q: What skills or qualities do you think are essential for someone in your position?
A: I think communication is super important as someone who works on a prod dev team. We are always collaborating with designers, working cross functionally with other teams, and discussing the pros and cons of features with product managers. It’s important to not only be able to build new features, but also explain technical complexities to other team members and think about the bigger picture.
Also, having a growth mindset is an important skill! There are always new technical frameworks coming out, and it’s exciting to be able to apply them to our code and grow our skillset. We also need to apply feedback, from other engineers as well as customers, so being able to grow and adapt is super useful.
Q: Can you explain a recent project you worked on that you’re particularly proud of?
A: Building the entire entity page feature from scratch! My team has completely built the framework to support news and publishers from the ground up over the past year. This includes allowing publishers to sign in to a new Nextdoor account, create posts, and manage their profiles. In addition, it included the work to show news posts in the feed.
From a product side, I think this project will definitely help connect neighbors to their communities better and improve their experience on Nextdoor. From a technical side, I loved the challenge of building a new feature from scratch and exploring the best way to apply new frameworks and strong technical coding practices.
Q: How does customer feedback influence your development process?
A: Customer feedback is always considered in our development process! One of Nextdoor’s values is Act like an Owner, where we always take pride in our work and want to build products that are kept to a high standard. When customer feedback comes in, we triage it and prioritize it based on how much it affects customers, and fixing these bugs are part of our daily workflow.
This includes features that we are currently working on as well as features that we own from the past – for example, I fix bugs that come up for For Sale & Free, which I focused more on last year, but still take ownership over that feature.
Q: What’s your favorite team tradition or ritual that helps build camaraderie?
A: My whole team loves puzzles! At the end of meetings, we love ending the meeting with a daily brain teaser, and keeping score of who solves the most brain teasers. We also love doing games like Tradle and New York Times Connections. Having a strong bond with my teammates is one of my favorite parts about working here at Nextdoor!
Q: What aspect of your work at Nextdoor do you find most fulfilling?
A: What I find most fulfilling is seeing how the features we build directly impact how neighbors connect with their communities. When we launch something new like the Entity Pages and then see real publishers and neighbors interacting through that feature, it makes all the technical challenges worthwhile. It’s rewarding to know that our code is helping strengthen neighborhood connections across the platform.
Interested in joining Cidney and the innovative ProdDev team at Nextdoor? Check out our careers page to explore current opportunities and help us build technology that brings neighborhoods together.
This article is part of our ongoing series highlighting the talented individuals across Nextdoor’s organization. Stay tuned for more inspiring stories from our team as we continue to explore the people and partnerships that make Nextdoor a unique platform. Follow us on LinkedIn and X to catch future installments featuring more of our team members.
