After emerging on the other side of the pandemic, work has become more directly intertwined with aspects of our lives than ever before. It’s no longer just a 9-to-5 placeholder that we disregard when leaving the office; employees brought their careers into their homes while working remotely with their teams, and the professional values they hold came along with it.
As a result, job seekers in tech specifically are now looking beyond personal growth opportunities and a collaborative company culture in their next role. Seeing one’s work directly impact the world and personal values alignment are becoming increasingly important. Many are surprised to find out that the dynamic they dream about is readily attainable with the proper search. You just have to know where to look.
“What excites me most about the work I do is the potential to transform society for the better,” said kea Engineer Wayne Kong. “The team, the culture and the values we hold have enabled me to transform my life.”
Built In San Francisco caught up with five hiring local companies to gain some insight into their 2021 business goals, and what big real-world changes are on the horizon.
kea allows restaurant teams of all sizes to take advantage of AI capabilities and human intelligence for more fulfilling customer experiences. The platform’s AI takes customer orders and is able to provide upsell opportunities while human specialists process the information for accuracy.
Embracing challenges for growth: “I’ve been with kea for about eight months, which is incredibly long in terms of startup time,” Hong said. “During this period I’ve experienced many changes with the company – some more difficult than others. What drew me to the company in the beginning has either continued or grown to be even more compelling. I value more and more the level of autonomy, the ownership, the impact, and the trust I have in my teammates that I’ve had the opportunity to enjoy at kea. I have had the opportunity to take ownership and implement several high-impact projects, and my teammates have always had my back and trusted my judgment to make important decisions. The team, the culture and the values we hold have enabled me to transform my life.”
What excites me most about the work I do is the potential to transform society for the better.”
Making a global impact: “As an engineer, what excites me most about the work I do is the potential to transform society for the better. The quick-service restaurant industry has a market size in the hundreds of billions and employs millions. Every day these millions of QSR employees might spend up to an hour of their shift taking calls and placing orders. This time is only likely to increase as consumer behavior trends towards omni-channel consumption habits. In terms of the potential to transform society for the better, I couldn’t ask for a more compelling opportunity.”
Ethos offers a streamlined approach to acquiring a life insurance policy by using big data and technology to offer affordable, individualized options. Policies can be applied for and approved in minutes through an online application process, with a variety of coverage options available to ensure families have all of their bases covered.
Smooth transitions: “I first started my Ethos journey on the underwriting experience (UWX) team a year and a half ago,” Sandt said. “At the time, Ethos was a smaller company so I was able to get to know a lot of my team members and build close relationships. As timing had it, I was also studying for the bar exam, so my schedule consisted of studying during my lunch breaks and after work. When I passed, my UWX team was more than supportive of my goal to switch over to the legal team.”
“Experiencing this growth and support from my team members has kept me here, and I still can’t believe that I’m practicing law at a startup like Ethos. I’ve had the opportunity to work under our general counsel who has been a great mentor to me. Our collaborative environment allows me to seek answers and get help without feeling out of place. Everyone here genuinely cares about helping you grow and learn, regardless of their team or title.”
Our collaborative environment allows me to seek answers and get help without feeling out of place.”
Building support structures: “Seeing where we’ve come from, how fast we’ve grown, and how much we’ve changed over a short amount of time excites me. My work revolves around helping Ethos grow by removing bottlenecks, streamlining internal processes and keeping us in compliance. Our mission on the legal team is to protect Ethos and ensure everyone is able to continue doing their jobs swiftly, enable us to add new products and improve the user experience.”
“Recently, we’ve also put more focus on our employee resource groups (ERGs). The four groups are growing, adding new activities and creating spaces where everyone has a voice. I am honored to be the president for our Pride ERG, where I can contribute to our DEI goals and create a safe space for our LGBTQ+ community and allies.”
Wix allows users to design their own websites to accomplish their goals, making it possible to get stores up and running in a matter of hours. The platform makes it easy for everyone from small business owners to creative minds to start a website that boosts their online presence, with tools available for building portfolios, e-commerce stores, media websites and more.
Culture is crucial: “Honestly, it sounds cliché, but to me it was the company culture,” Micheloto said. “I was so amazed by how diverse and special the people are here. Being interviewed by genuine people from all over the world who were really interested in my life journey was the deciding factor for me.”
Being interviewed by genuine people that were really interested in my life journey was the deciding factor.”
Changes on the horizon: “The bold goals are amazing in all areas, and I’m excited to be part of all the new functionalities coming our way. I’m particularly excited to see all the improvements for global markets in the near future. I think the work I do in customer care will help to meet these goals.”
Ontra is a scalable, end-to-end tech solution that automates routine and high-volume legal processes, eliminating inefficiencies found when working with traditional law firms.
Prioritizing development: “The company offers a great working environment that fosters personal and team development while valuing in-person communication and collaboration,” Brown said. “And despite being thrust into this long remote work experience due to the pandemic, Ontra continues to prioritize the importance of development and effective communication across teams and departments.”
“For example, the company implemented a new review cycle that calls for detailed and candid performance analyses to ensure that individual and team development is top of mind. It means a lot that they value our individual career paths just as much as they value the growth of each department. When it comes to communication within the engineering team, we talk daily over Slack or directly through ad hoc Zoom meetings to pair program, debug or discuss solutions together.”
It’s definitely fulfilling to see the work I do reflected in the overall success of our company.”
Every person makes a difference: “I am most excited about Ontra’s growth as we continue to hire ambitious and motivated engineers to help provide excellent customer experiences. And it’s not just engineers – the company is bringing on talented individuals across all departments with whom we can collaborate.”
“I’m also extremely excited about my personal contributions to the company. As a lead engineer, I’m managing Pivotal stories that work toward our quarterly OKR projects and holding bi-weekly check-ins with my direct reports. As an individual contributor, I’m heading up a new dashboard redesign, working on individual and pair programming and juggling code review, interviews and planning/collaboration meetings. It’s definitely fulfilling to see the work I do reflected in the overall success of our company as we launch new products and features.”
TrueAccord uses machine learning to streamline the debt resolution process while taking a human-centric approach to helping people regain their financial health. The platform connects data points to predict a person’s reaction to communication frequency, timing and content in order to determine a more effective, humanistic collection process.
Constantly evolving together: “We have an awesome team of kind, supportive, diverse and dependable individuals,” Jiménez said. “On a daily basis, I am in awe of how exceptional my colleagues are as people and how strong they are in their areas of expertise. As a result, our work is impactful, and we get to celebrate its results.”
“TrueAccord has constantly been evolving in my time here. This is evident when I reflect on where we have been, where we are today, and where we are headed from a team, technology, strategy or operations standpoint. Our growing team operates with ownership and counts on the trust from our leadership needed to make the improvements necessary in order to achieve our goals. Our strategy has become much more expansive. In effect, for the last few years, I have been pursuing an education to learn what a successful startup looks like.”
On a daily basis, I am in awe of how exceptional my colleagues are as people.”
Expanding the purpose: “Our focus has been expanding to a wider area in the lifecycle of a consumer’s account over the last few years. We have been working on a suite of really interesting products to support that, and we have the opportunity to experiment even more broadly with new tools and ideas. It is exciting to know there is a lot more to come in the collective technical growth of our team.”
“For me, this means that I get to draw on the context of our existing products to mimic the technical aspects that work really well, rethink what doesn’t apply, and propose and prove ideas that could improve all of our products. It is an opportunity to have a significant impact, and it is super fulfilling work. It is especially fulfilling because what we are building will help consumers get their accounts in good standing sooner, improve their credit, and continue to make the debt collection process less painful.”
