Some made the move to make more of an impact. Others joined because of their prospective companies’ rising roles in their industries. One even immediately applied for a job after reading the employer’s core values.
The reasons may vary, but the promise for fulfilling, challenging work links the following eight techies together.
That, and they all found this work in the Bay Area tech community.
If that piques your interest, read through to learn all the reasons why these employees pursued roles at the following eight companies, and why you should consider them, too.
Miro helps distributed teams collaborate in real time through its online whiteboard platform.
A hallmark change: “My experience with Miro began as a power user and it fundamentally changed the way I communicate my thinking. A company that enables new ways to collaborate embodies a mission I knew I had to be part of. My employee journey started when there were less than 150 people companywide. Today, there are nearly a thousand. During my time here, I've seen so much growth in myself and at Miro. I've built programs from scratch and seen them flourish and am pushed to iterate my approach to the work every day as the market shifts.
“From my direct teammates to the most senior leaders, everyone at Miro sees opportunities to get ahead in the market by focusing on high-impact work. Even more importantly, employees at Miro care deeply about each other — it's built into the culture but mostly, it’s innate and starts with every individual. This translates to huge potential for growth and success for everyone at the company, and my team is directly contributing to it. This is going to be a hallmark point in my career and I feel fortunate to work with this team.”
The time is now: “Miro’s on the fast track to success and there’s no sign of us slowing down. When you focus on empathy, iteration and playing as a team, you can create something that’s beautifully designed and centered around a world-class user experience. Industries and functions are adopting new ways of working that stretch their creativity, collaboration and productivity, and as the market leader in our space, it is so exciting to see how Miro plays a role in that story. We’re seeing the future of work being made right before us, and Miro gets to be in the driver’s seat.”
Alt’s alternative assets platform allows for users to turn collector items — think: sports cards — into investments.
A delight to work with: “I joined Alt because of how passionate the team is about building delightful, intuitive consumer experiences. At Alt, I work closely with many departments including design, engineering and customer success. Across them all, people are smart, thoughtful and empathetic, and that makes it both fun and challenging to go to work every day.”
Digging the data: “I’m excited that Alt is committed to building data-driven tools that make it easier for experienced investors to make better-informed decisions and more accessible for folks who are new to the space.”
Wix helps anyone — business owners, artists, teachers — build a website and grow their online presence.
Shaping the future: “I joined Wix before the pandemic, and was excited about everything they were doing in the world of websites and web development. The fact that anyone could build a website and Wix was starting their journey into reaching JavaScript web developers made it a stimulating opportunity.
“This past year of uncertainty and remote connectivity has reaffirmed why I was so excited about Wix and Velo, Wix’s full-stack web development platform. We’ve seen how critical it is to be able to move quickly and adapt in this world, and Wix and Velo make it easy for anyone to be able to support their business in a digital world.
“Our team attends conferences, gives webinars and participates in user feedback calls to share with the world what Velo can do. Being part of the team that’s helping shape the future of web development is why I’m still here.”
Eager to educate: “I’m excited to see Velo become the go-to platform for web development for businesses in the future. Our product roadmap continues to adapt to meet changing developer needs, and we’ve reached a point where product education is a bigger demand than new product features. Our team is working on many new education initiatives from video series to blog tutorials.
“We’ll also keep a closer pulse on the community with new initiatives to make sure we stay on the right course for web development. Coding your own website should be an option for everyone, and our team and products are working hard to make that future a reality.”
Faire’s wholesale marketplace connects 150,000 local retailers with more than 15,000 small and medium-sized brands while also offering sales, marketing and analytics to those brands.
For the people: “Since joining, I’ve realized that the people are a function of Faire’s cultural values. Every person I met during the interview process was someone I wanted to learn from and serve our customers alongside. This doesn’t happen by chance. Faire’s cultural values guide our hiring process and ultimately bring out the best in our employees.
“One of our company values is ‘seek the truth.’ I’ve never been surrounded by coworkers more passionate about deeply understanding our customers and how our products impact them. Another value is ‘embrace the adventure.’ We’re changing the wholesale industry every day, which requires taking big risks and diving headfirst into the unknown. Our team approaches this ambiguity with equal parts humility and confidence while encouraging each other to tackle the hardest problems our customers face. Finally, my favorite value is ‘be kind.’ Warmth, understanding, and genuine care for each other underpin the way we work.”
Long-term relationships: “Rather than focusing on keeping customers engaged on the platform, we get the joy of partnering more deeply with our customers over time. This means identifying and unlocking new opportunities that we might not have even been aware of the year before. After our first couple of years of operating, we found that brands wanted a time- and cost-efficient way to ship products to their growing list of Faire retailers. We then dove into the world of shipping and partnered with brands to launch Ship with Faire, our solution that scales with their Faire business. As our relationships with our customers grow, so will the breadth of products we build to succeed together.”
Kinship’s group of brands, teams and partners offer pet parents resources, products and services to take better care of their non-human family members.
Optimistic and open: “I was looking for a company where I would belong, especially since I'd be onboarding and working remotely for months. During my interviews, people here were quick-thinking, goal-focused, funny and personable. I wrapped up the interview process with a sense that I could feel at home among them. Additionally, the company values that they represented and highlighted throughout the process — open to all, optimistic and purposefully inquisitive — felt like a perfect fit and helped seal the deal for me. I'm happy to say that, after a few months of working at Kinship, I still feel all of the above is true.”
Passion for pets: “I love the space that Kinship works in. Pets, and dogs in particular, have always been a passion of mine. All of us share that in common, and there are a lot of opportunities for us to create and improve the pet industry across the organization. Using technology to create solutions that improve the lives of pet parents, and by extension, their pets, is inspirational and invigorating.
“My part of the puzzle is to develop a content platform that helps pet parents feel more confident in their pet parenting. We are working to provide answers to all of the questions pet parents face around health, behavior, nutrition, lifestyle and shopping. There is so much whitespace ahead of us!”
Assembled’s workforce management product offers one system for scheduling, forecasting and reporting to ensure faster response times for support teams.
Praise for the people: “Every morning, I wake up and make progress on a problem that matters while surrounded by amazing people. Very few companies deliver on both of these consistently. I hop on calls with our customers and see them light up as they tell us how much their agents love our features, such as our Google Calendar integration.
“Of course, there are less happy moments as well, such as late-night outages. Pushing through these challenges surrounded by great people — and celebrating with a South Park Cafe happy hour — is its own type of fun.”
Eyes on the industry: “Customer support will become a first-class function at every company as we move more business online. We’re early in that journey, and I’m excited to see how Assembled can accelerate that movement.
“In the near future, I won’t rest easy until we deliver a first-class scheduling product. I’m particularly excited about adding more flexible ways for support agents to choose their shifts to save companies time by building out our schedule generation and optimization features.”
Sprig, formerly known as UserLeap, offers a product research platform that hosts video interviews, concept testing and micro-surveys.
In search of impact: “The opportunity to work alongside a leadership team that has a proven track record was too good to pass up. Coming from one of the largest tech companies in the world, I was itching to build an impactful product and to have more ownership over the development lifecycle. Sprig has given me that opportunity and created a collaborative atmosphere where I have been able to continue growing in my career.
“I also love working on disruptive products and Sprig is redefining an industry that hasn’t changed in 15-plus years. While traditional user research can be slow and cumbersome, Sprig’s approach helps product teams continuously engage with their users to answer critical questions in hours, rather than weeks. I’m excited to be working on a product that is solving real problems and is being used by some of the world’s most successful companies.”
Lots to love: “It’s exciting to work on a platform that is already experiencing massive scale and only continues to grow with the breakneck pace of our go-to-market team. We’re constantly optimizing existing processes while also exploring and deploying new technologies. Every day at Sprig comes with a new and exciting challenge.
“Additionally, Sprig empowers product teams to innovate faster by bringing customer insights into focus at every step of product development. By listening to real users, companies can learn faster, make data-driven decisions and build a better product. We’ve only just scratched the surface of what’s possible when it comes to continuous product research!”
Using machine learning, NextRoll’s marketing technology is split into two business units to drive growth for direct-to-consumer brands and expand sales pipelines for B2B companies.
First impressions: “When I looked into NextRoll for a possible career move, I noticed they had been recognized as a top place to work for the past two years. How remarkable for a company to be acknowledged as a best place to work during a pandemic. Then I looked into their technology and was pleasantly surprised to learn they were an industry leader in adtech. I read about the changes that NextRoll was making in preparation for third-party deprecation to minimize customer impact and I was doubly impressed.
“When I saw NextRoll’s core values were growth, loyalty, innovation, resourcefulness, fun and transparency, I decided then and there that I wanted to join this company. When I did, I was impressed that each person I met embodied the values of the company.”
Ready for industry changes: “We’ve got a go-to-market strategy to handle the deprecation of third-party cookies that will make us a formidable force in the adtech space. Our goal is to level the playing field for small businesses that have been hugely impacted worldwide due to the global pandemic. We want to be a resource and a solution provider. As one of the newest members of the team, I want us to deliver on all of our goals and commitments to our customers.”
