‘I Love My Job’: I’m Empowered to Build My ‘Own Career Path’ and Experience ‘Tremendous Growth'

Welcome to I Love My Job, the series where we hear from women who really love their jobs. In this edition, we sat down with Preethy Padmanabhan, the Senior Director of Platform Product Marketing at Freshworks.

Reflecting back on her three years at Freshworks, Padmanabhan emphasizes how supportive the culture has been. “Freshworks has strongly supported me in advancing my career,” she tells us. “Freshworks empowers employees, including myself, to build their own career paths both within the organization and beyond.”

In her case, Padmanabhan was empowered to grow from a Director of Marketing to a Senior Director of Marketing and had many mentors at the company who encouraged her to take on additional responsibilities and grow. 

And, now, Padmanabhan tells us that she has the chance to pay this support forward and “create tremendous growth and impact for my team and the organization.” For instance, she’s a constant source of support for her team, which she has grown from three to fourteen Product Marketers!

In the video below, Padmanabhan tells us more about why she loves working at Freshworks. We also provide lightly edited highlights from the video discussion in the following article.

In case you have trouble watching this video, please click here to watch it on YouTube.

Talk to us about a project you’re working on that you find really exciting.

What I find most exciting about my work is developer marketing. Developers are crucial to the digital transformation of businesses, and their contributions are fundamental to software innovation. My team is responsible for building authentic relationships within the community, which includes incredible ideas on how to improve customer experience and employee experience — the two markets that Freshworks serves. We have a marketplace where we host 1300+ apps and allow customers to customize and extend the capabilities of our products. 

Over the past year, we organized monthly meetups for the developer community and had two big events in Bangalore and San Francisco that attracted close to 150 developers. As a result of monthly events, developer-focused messaging, and activities, we doubled our developer community to 2500 in 2022… In 2023, we aim to grow the community even further. We have planned three large events and multiple meetups across the globe.

How would you describe the culture at Freshworks?

The guiding principles for Freshworks’ culture code are: 

• Craftsmanship

• Happy work environment

• Agility with accountability 

• True friend for the customer

Freshworks is one of the few companies where I see the culture code truly put into practice. Overall, it reflects our culture of integrity, which is very dear to me. We say what we do and do what we say. 

What is your favorite thing about Freshworks?

Employees are empowered to deliver lasting impact. In addition to my role in product marketing, I’ve worked with HR to bring several workshops to life that are centered around the employee experience, how to cope with COVID-19, time management, and APEX (Achieving Personal Excellence), which is a leadership workshop with meditation programs. 

My team’s engagement score has increased, and I’m super proud to have made an impact that benefits the overall happiness of my fellow employees.

What advice do you have for other women looking to work at Freshworks?

When considering new opportunities, I recommend looking at companies that have women leaders in the C-Suite and have initiatives to increase the number of women employees in the workplace. Also look at companies that support employees for their personal career journeys. 

I’m happy to note that Freshworks has consistently increased the number of women employees to 35% in the past three years… We have women leaders across the organization, including in the C-suite.  

Fairygodboss is proud to work with Freshworks. Find a job there today!

Check out other posts in the ‘I Love My Job’ series:

• ‘I Love My Job’: Making an ‘Upsized Impact’ on How Finance Is Done at a Mission-Driven Company

• ‘I Love My Job’: My Company Supports My Development and Creativity — From a Software Engineer

• ‘I Love My Job’: ‘It's Not All About Bugs’ — Why Pest Management Is an Incredibly Rewarding Field

• ‘I Love My Job’: How I Feel Empowered to Innovate, Explore, and Grow as a Software Engineer

• ‘I Love My Job’: ‘Building a Place Where Our Associates Can Flourish’ as a President & ERG Sponsor