“I can honestly say that I look forward to coming to work every morning.”
Jake Carlson is the head of product at Membersy, and he can sum up what makes him so motivated to get out of bed and get to work every morning in one word: autonomy. Carlson told Built In that management’s approach to hiring is getting smart people in the door and letting them decide what success looks like.
“I’ve been given an amount of autonomy that I’ve never experienced before in my career,” Carlson said.
Carlson is not the only Austin tech worker who is racing to get out the door and into the office each morning. Fernando Gutierrez, fellow head of product at Jointly, joined the company just six weeks ago, yet has already found all the ingredients necessary for workplace happiness.
“Solving big problems that matter, a driven team and a fun work life is the recipe for success,” Gutierrez said.
Carlson and Gutierrez are not anomalies in Austin tech. The city is filled with companies whose missions, rewarding work and supportive cultures and leadership teams make beating traffic the hardest part of going to work each day. We just so happen to be profiling 10 of them here, all of which are hiring.
What they do: Tecovas is a direct-to-consumer western wear company that designs, produces and sells hats, boots, jeans and more.
What’s one thing that makes your company culture unique or special?
There’s a great deal of collaboration at Tecovas, and everyone is an expert in their respective field. Every voice is heard and well-respected and there truly are no egos. We have a great environment for problem-solving, establishing feedback loops and developing successful, holistic solutions. Recently, we launched a promotion using a new tech automation that involved collaboration with five different departments. This was wildly successful with wins in customer experience, operational efficiency and technical solution. I attribute this success to how well the collaboration was facilitated.
What’s one company resource, program or benefit that has really enhanced your experience as an employee?
Tecovas is great in empowering you and supportive of implementing new ideas. One of these new ideas was implementing a microservice architecture. Implementing microservices can be daunting and complex, and as such a lot of companies shy away from such a challenge! Instead, I’ve received nothing but support and genuine excitement from Tecovas. We have since successfully launched microservices, and it has become an integral part of our tech architecture. This puts us on the path to gold standard integrations!
What they do: Subcontractors are a vital part of the construction industry, but many have to pay for materials out of pocket, limiting their cash on hand. Billd is a fintech company that helps keep cash in subcontractors’ accounts by offering financing for building materials.
What’s one thing that makes Billd’s company culture unique or special?
A little over a year ago, Billd started using analytics software Culture Index as one of its hiring tools. Culture Index helps employers know which butt goes in the right seat, so to speak. Not only does it help with hiring the right person, but leadership also takes the time to review each employee’s results to get to know their strengths. Personally, I have always valued these types of tests and believe that if you are already leaning into your strengths then you will naturally succeed. Culture Index is just one of the tools that demonstrates how Billd sees employees as its most valuable asset.
I have been fortunate enough to have Billd sponsor me in a leadership development training program.”
What’s one company resource, program or benefit that has really enhanced your experience as an employee?
I am coming up on almost two years at Billd. I feel fortunate to have worked closely with leaders who value what the future holds for the company as well as what my future holds. The long-term professional growth of all employees is a priority.
I have been fortunate enough to have Billd sponsor me in a leadership development training program that takes into consideration a person’s unique personal and professional goals and matches them with the right mentor to take them to the next level professionally. Billd not only sees potential in me but is also willing to spend the extra time and money on my continued growth.
What they do: Beamery’s talent lifecycle management software uses artificial intelligence to help companies diversify their candidate pipelines, inject more personalization into the recruiting process, upskill and reskill employees, and more.
What’s one thing that makes Beamery’s company culture unique or special?
I’ve been in the industry for a number of years and have worked with many large organizations. What makes Beamery’ culture different are the open lines of communication that run throughout the company. I believe that every voice is important, and the leadership team is open to hearing from all. Company initiatives have surfaced and been initiated through employee feedback.
What makes Beamery’ culture different are the open lines of communication.”
What’s the coolest project you’ve worked on recently, and what did you enjoy most about it?
Working with large global companies, the common denominator — and their biggest challenge — is identifying and filling open positions. Take healthcare: today, the biggest challenge is finding doctors and nurses. With a worldwide shortage of healthcare workers, identifying these individuals is extremely important, and identifying and building solutions to meet that demand is very cool.
What they do: After going to the dentist, most people either use dental insurance or pay out of pocket. Membersy’s tech gives patients and practitioners a third option; a subscription model that charges a yearly fee for access to discounted procedures.
What’s one thing that makes Membersy’s company culture unique or special?
Membersy is at an inflection point in its upward trajectory, and now is the time to join. We are making key hires in various departments to build out high-performing teams. As one such hire, I’ve been given an amount of autonomy that I’ve never experienced before in my career. Management hires competent people and lets them decide and drive what success looks like in their respective departments. Everyone has been welcoming and accommodating, and I can honestly say that I look forward to coming to work every morning.
Management hires competent people and lets them decide and drive what success looks.”
What’s the coolest project you’ve worked on recently, and what did you enjoy most about it?
During my first month, I was tasked with instituting agile software development practices for the product development team. I relished the chance to set up sustainable processes based on what I’ve seen work throughout my career and was given the leeway and support to institute new policies to help the development team move faster in a disciplined fashion. I’ve enjoyed collaborating with the team to hash out ways of working tailored to the company’s unique situation and sensibilities. We’ve built the engine and now we need to tune it with what we learn by watching it run.
What they do: Amherst is a real estate tech company that uses in-house analytics to spot real estate investment opportunities, constructs mortgage-backed securities and offers loans to commercial property investors.
What’s one thing that makes Amherst’s company culture unique or special?
We have a lot of information and data at our fingertips, which allows us to stay ahead of our competitors. During the housing market crisis of 2006 to 2012, we were able to foresee the bubble before most of the big Wall Street firms. We were also one of the first institutional investors to invest in single-family rentals. Today, we continue to use data to drive our innovations and decisions.
As part of the modeling team, I study huge amounts of data, build models and provide analysis and market signals. Even when our models’ performance is on par with our top competitors, the team never ceases to find ways to improve upon our work. That helps us produce market analyses that are sometimes at least two months ahead of our competitors.
I strongly believe that our business practices can touch so many people’s lives.”
What’s the coolest project you’ve worked on recently, and how did it help you grow professionally?
Besides building large-scale financial models, I also do a lot of ad hoc analyses. One such analysis looked at the impact of pandemic-era unemployment benefits and stimulus checks on tenant pay rates. You can clearly see how government support during the pandemic financially helped our residents, and how disciplined they are. Our analysis shows that our residents are financially responsible and act in good faith. That makes me feel more responsible with my job as I strongly believe that our business practices can touch so many people’s lives.
What they do: Gembah helps entrepreneurs take their product ideas from concept to reality. The company connects entrepreneurs with product development experts and manufacturers to provide end-to-end support throughout the creation process.
What’s one thing that makes Gembah’s company culture unique or special?
Working at Gembah feels like how I would imagine joining the Avengers or X-Men would feel. I feel grateful to work with people who are masters of their specific subject matter and own their “super powers.” That speaks to our culture: We are allowed to ask questions and learn from our peers and leaders in a warm and inviting environment.
I’ve had the opportunity to speak with other employees through usability testing and user interviews to get their firsthand insight about using our internal tools. I have gained so much appreciation for my coworkers in regard to the roles we play in keeping Gembah rolling every day. This atmosphere pushes me to put my best foot forward because I know everyone else here is working just as hard. Team work makes the dream work!
I feel grateful to work with people who are masters of their specific subject matter and own their ‘super powers.’”
What’s the coolest project you’ve worked on recently, and what did you enjoy most about it?
The coolest project I’ve worked on is the present work we are doing in developing the Gembah marketplace. We are creating a marketplace to direct entrepreneurs to services to create their physical goods and products. I’m excited to have the opportunity to reimagine our offerings from a visual and usability perspective for users and Gembah as a whole. I also enjoy our monthly all-hands meetings because they provide transparency and an opportunity for alignment on our goals as a company. It gives me confidence that we are all on the same page as we begin every new month.
What they do: Jointly is a real estate tech company thats platform is designed to give agents a single portal for managing offers and forms, collaborating with their team and working with clients.
What’s one thing that makes Jointly’s company culture unique or special?
I’ve only been at Jointly for six weeks, and the No. 1 thing that has struck me is how driven and dedicated the team is. Nothing is someone else’s problem. During my first few weeks, we onboarded a large team of real estate agents to the platform, and like with any other early-stage product, there were issues we didn’t anticipate.
Hierarchies aside, the whole team went above and beyond and proactively took care of the situation. From handling support tickets during the weekend to discovering the best ways to approach new use cases, each person assumed an important role to ensure our client had a great experience. Teams like ours are hard to find. We care deeply about the success of our clients, the company and each other.
Solving big problems that matter, a driven team and a fun work life is the recipe for success.”
What’s the coolest project you’ve worked on recently, and what did you enjoy most about it?
Right now, we are making the platform more flexible and adaptable to the many scenarios real estate agents, their teams and clients face. At the same time, we continue to expand our core value proposition in areas like contract-to-close and transaction coordinator capabilities.
We are solving a significant and relevant problem, and that’s exciting. Buying a house is often the most important transaction people make in their life, and although progress has been made in recent years, the experience is still very similar to the way it was 10 years ago.
Solving big problems that matter, a driven team and a fun work life is the recipe for success. The first few weeks have been great, and I’m really excited for what’s next.
What they do: AlertMedia’s emergency communication software is designed to give companies the ability to quickly communicate information and safety instructions to employees during emergencies.
What’s one thing that makes AlertMedia’s company culture unique or special?
One of the things I love most is that our company values — like “hard work pays off, we are humans, not robots and we work better together” — are practiced daily. The company regularly acknowledges and rewards employees for their work and contributions, which is extremely motivating and helps people see the impact everyone has on the business.
For example, each quarter we present company-wide values awards, where employees nominate coworkers they feel embody our values. I was honored to receive one of those awards last month. To me, it was not about the physical award. It was about the support and kind words I received from my supervisors, teammates and other employees throughout the organization congratulating me on a job well done.
The company regularly acknowledges and rewards employees for their work and contributions.”
What’s the coolest project you’ve worked on recently, and what did you enjoy most about it?
As the podcast producer at AlertMedia, part of my role is to find a wide range of subject matter experts to be guests on our show, “The Employee Safety Podcast.” These include safety professionals, academics, authors, public speakers and more. We’ve had guests ranging from executive leaders at Amazon and Salesforce to other high-profile experts from agencies like FEMA and the National Safety Council.
Every week, I look forward to hearing the advice, best practices and lessons learned from our guests. Not only does this project make me better at my job, but it also makes me a more informed, well-rounded and empathetic human being.
What they do: Stoplight is taking a collaborative approach to API development. Its platform enables both engineers and those without technical skills to work together to design, document and build APIs.
What’s one thing that makes Stoplight’s company culture unique or special?
Stoplight respects PTO. I’ve seen multiple situations where an employee with a specific speciality is on PTO and then an outage related to that employee’s specialty occurs. The rest of the company may not be sure how to solve the problem, but everyone insists on not bothering the person who can while they’re on PTO. We value autonomy and making the best of the hand that is dealt; if someone is on PTO, the rest of the company can figure out a solution. There is no finger pointing, berating or passing the buck.
I also love the availability of remote social activities. Whether it is music league, fantasy football with music instead of football; remote happy hours with video games and other activities, or sharing shoutouts and personal highlights during weekly company all-hands meetings, Stoplight knows how to offer optional, fun and fulfilling activities.
If someone is on PTO, the rest of the company can figure out a solution.”
What’s the coolest project you’ve worked on recently, and what did you enjoy most about it?
A relatively technical project I worked on recently involved a conflict-free replicated data type (CRDT) library for JavaScript and TypeScript called YJs. We used it to add collaborative editing to a new feature for our API governance product: picture Google Docs, Figma or Miro.
We built a system that takes in-browser text/JSON data, syncs it to other users’ browsers via CRDTs and periodically takes snapshots of it and stores those in a Postgres database. This technology combines the collaborative and dynamic aspect of in-memory CRDTs with long-term database storage by moving the data between the two locations as seamlessly as possible. On page load, we pull the latest snapshot, load it into CRDTs and the user notices minimal delay or inconsistent data between page loads.
The CRDT library didn’t have built-in support for ordered data, so we had to build an abstraction on top of it using both hashmaps and dictionaries to keep track of the order in which data changed. Eventually we hope to incorporate this abstraction upstream, because Stoplight is passionate about OSS! Overall the project has been a great exercise in full-stack development, data consistency and concurrent data processing.
What they do: Epicor’s enterprise resource planning software is used by companies in automotive, building supply, manufacturing and more to manage their business, teams and supply chain.
What’s one thing that makes Epicor’s company culture unique or special?
We use our deep industry expertise in relationship with each other every day. Our culture is focused on building collaborative relationships. There’s an immense willingness to and joy in sharing knowledge with colleagues. Whether it’s industry experience, product information or the history and current processes at the company, employees take pride in sharing knowledge to help each other and their team continuously improve. The team mentality is very real and it’s fun!
I have been with Epicor just over five years and have always enjoyed the opportunity to connect and learn from employees outside of HR. That said, I love our HR team! I’m proud to say my experience isn’t isolated. It’s replicated in the onboarding feedback gathered from new employees, which aligns with the findings of our 2021 engagement survey. I think our authentic, team-minded relationships truly set Epicor apart from other companies.
We’re in the midst of a talent war and reskilling and upskilling our employees is imperative.”
What’s the coolest project you’ve worked on recently, and what did you enjoy most about it?
We have a multi-generational workforce with strong, deep industry expertise and we want to foster a culture that shares and nurtures that expertise so that we all continue to learn and grow. We’re in the midst of a talent war and reskilling and upskilling our employees is imperative. That’s why I really enjoyed implementing an online learning library with a variety of on-demand training and development content.
With this project, we were able to provide an inclusive opportunity for employees to learn and develop with asynchronous and easily accessible content. No matter the role, level, performance, tenure or time zone, they now have the opportunity to carve out time for their own personal career development. This project continues to be purely about supporting our employees and their pursuit to learn and grow at Epicor.
