What does your company value? It’s a deep question that should have a clear answer.
Culture is more than an office buzzword — it’s made up of an organization’s mission, values, ethics, expectations and attitude, and it influences how all employees operate and interact. A company’s culture is a huge part of why people are attracted to roles within an organization, as well as why they stay long-term, as it sets the tone for employee morale, motivation and engagement.
A 2019 survey by Glassdoor found that over 56 percent of adults across four countries, including the United States, consider company culture to be more important than salary when it comes to job satisfaction. Similarly, 65 percent of adults said that their company’s culture is one of the main reasons for staying in their job, and 71 percent stated that they would look for a job elsewhere if their current company’s culture deteriorates.
In the fast-growing tech industry, a unique and welcoming workplace culture can make all the difference when it comes to attracting top-quality talent. Built In Austin sat down with nine industry leaders to talk about the culture and values of their company, the growth and development opportunities they’ve experienced, and what they believe sets their company apart from the rest.
The best part? They’re all hiring!
Describe your company culture in one word. What made you pick that word?
Empowering. Canva’s culture and environment empowers everyone to be their best and to do their best work. Anyone can share ideas quickly between teams, and our culture and structure make it simple to quickly collaborate and execute. We recently partnered with Flipgrid, an edtech provider, to create a stunning set of Canva background templates for teachers and students to leverage in the classroom as they create videos. This started from a discussion with an old colleague at Flipgrid on how we could partner to inspire creativity and engagement in the classroom.
Canva empowers anyone to bring new projects to life, so I was able to present the idea to multiple teams and quickly assemble a team together. Within 60 days of the initial discussion, the team had succeeded in implementing a joint campaign with Flipgrid and created 100 education templates that were used by more than 60,000 teachers and students in the first two weeks since launching. Bringing this project to life wouldn’t have been possible without Canva’s empowering culture, where everyone is encouraged to share new and creative ideas.
Canva empowers anyone to bring new projects to life.”
What’s the coolest project you’ve worked on recently?
Over the last couple of months, I’ve been fortunate to onboard four incredible newbies who have joined the Canva Education team. Growing the team has been a really amazing experience — it’s incredibly rewarding to learn about each team member, their unique superpower and to support them through the onboarding process. This opportunity has enabled me to build on my existing skills and have a direct impact on my team’s growth by providing a more hands-on experience and the opportunity to create something truly unique and tailored to my team.
Describe your company culture in one word. What made you pick that word?
Nimble. The world of Property Management is an ever changing one, with strategies and efficiencies being developed and transformed each day, month, quarter and year. It requires its team members to always think on their feet and have a constant willingness to course correct.
During the pandemic, every department had to shift gears and adjust directives. The Property Management team, our boots on the ground, have agility in their DNA. Our No. 1 commitment is to provide a clean, safe, functional home while delivering excellent customer service.
Property Management did not cease during COVID, nor did the face-to-face interaction with our residents. Our turnover teams worked diligently to provide move-in ready homes for future residents. Our maintenance teams continue to provide safe interactions with current residents while assisting with repairs. Area managers in each of our markets continued to lead the charge and set exemplary examples for their teams and peers while navigating the ever-evolving changes placed in their path. I could not be prouder of the team of individuals who represent the Property Management division.
Having a voice that is heard and respected is what I always look for when maintaining a career with a company.”
How long have you been with the company, and what professional growth or development have you seen in that time?
I have been with the company for just over 2.5 years; however, I started my career in Property Management in the Student Housing industry as a part-time leasing agent. As my career developed, so did my passion for property management. I expanded my roles with various companies focusing primarily on multifamily rentals.
When I made the shift to Amherst’s Main Street Renewal, I did not have the caliber of experience focused on this industry sector. I was nervous to make the move, but it was one of the best career decisions I have made. In this time, I have developed a robust knowledge of the single-family world and am part of the roundtable of leaders that continues to help the Company evolve through process improvement and execution.
Having a voice that is heard and respected is what I always look for when maintaining a career with a company. However, being part of the evolution of change and curating what that looks like for my team has allowed me to truly grow in my position as a leader.
Describe your company culture in one word. What made you pick that word?
If I had to pick just one word, I would say ‘supportive’. Orchard is supportive not only on an individual level, but also on a team level. Because Orchard is a rapidly growing company, things are constantly changing and employees have to adapt to these changes. It has been clear to me since day one that we are all working towards the same goal of creating the best customer experience in real estate, and everyone here is ready and willing to pitch in and help where needed to achieve those goals. One thing I love most about Orchard is that they send out employee satisfaction surveys a few times per year. These surveys help to identify things that are going well, as well as areas that may need improvement. They are always quick to act after these surveys and you notice changes right away. It’s encouraging to know that the company truly values employee feedback and is doing everything they can to build this amazing work environment.
It’s encouraging to know that the company truly values employee feedback and is doing everything they can to build this amazing work environment.”
How long have you been with the company, and what professional growth or development have you seen in that time?
I have been with Orchard for a little over 10 months, and in this short amount of time, I have seen tremendous growth potential throughout the whole company. Orchard has a low ego culture where everyone is encouraged to “own it”. This means that executives welcome good ideas from anyone, no matter their level, as long as it makes us all better. Because Orchard is growing so quickly, new opportunities are always arising. The company is committed to growing its employees, and always gives current employees an opportunity to apply to jobs in different departments, if that’s where their interest lies. If there is a role or position that you are wanting to work towards, management is also very good at helping pave the way to set you up for success in achieving that position.
Describe your company culture in one word. What made you pick that word?
Growth. We are not only highly motivated to solve the challenge of food growth around the world with our innovative technology, but we also support growth and inspire one another on a daily basis. A great example of this is when I joined Prospera, many people from other teams approached me to offer their help and guidance in order for me to be better prepared towards my first challenge in the role.
I find myself amazed by all the knowledge that I’ve acquired and continue to gain.”
How long have you been with the company, and what professional growth or development have you seen in that time?
I’ve been with the company for over 8 months. When I first started my role, I wasn't familiar with the agriculture industry at all, and all the new content seemed to be part of a whole different world to me. As I worked through the different projects with my colleagues, I found myself quickly immersed in the domain, and now, only a few months later, I find myself amazed by all the knowledge that I’ve acquired and continue to gain. I am now responsible for solving our complex UX challenges, and creating compelling experiences for food growers around the world.
Describe your company culture in one word. What made you pick that word?
Family. We truly take the time to understand people, and what drives them in their personal life really strengthens the relationships we have at SciPlay, much like a family! These relationships are valued more than anything and last a lifetime.
Our global team is also extremely spirited. From one look at our Austin office, or any of our worldwide locations, anyone can see that we are passionate about what we do at SciPlay. With decor inspired by our mobile games and company branding lining our walls, SciPlay has created an environment that fosters teamwork through rallying around the common goal of bringing a thrilling mobile gaming experience to millions of users.
SciPlay has created an environment that fosters teamwork.”
What’s the coolest project you’ve worked on recently?
The coolest project we have worked on recently is our NASCAR partnership. As one of SciPlay’s biggest sponsorships yet, we featured our Gold Fish Casino Slots game on AJ Allmendinger’s No. 16 Chevrolet during the Sparks 300 at Talladega Superspeedway. Additionally, Allmendinger drove the No. 16 Jackpot Party Casino — another game featured on the platform’s casual, casino and bingo game lineup — Camaro ZL1 1LE at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL.
As a digital business, it was AMAZING to see our brand come to life at the Talladega and Charlotte Speedways. Both Gold Fish and Jackpot Party Casino featured in-game events that connected the overall player experience both inside and outside the product. We were grateful to partner with NASCAR to create a Perigon type of experience.
Describe your company culture in one word. What made you pick that word?
Autonomy. ThousandEyes is a place where individuals are empowered to execute on their work autonomously and without a lot of hand holding or overhead from excessive meetings. For the Web Platform team, we’ll work together to decide on the high level direction for your work, and you’ll have the ability to execute on it without any low level micromanagement. If individuals observe areas that can be improved, we encourage and empower them to better the product in both technical and functional ways. The culture is also one that is highly objective, where people are receptive to your ideas if they’re backed up with objective reasoning or logic. There is not a lot of bias towards doing things a particular way just because “it’s the way it’s always been done”.
A real world example of this autonomy is that we had an employee who observed that our app was becoming too monolithic as the company scaled. The employee worked through a plan of action and design for migrating to microservices and micro frontends, and the broader organization got on board with this plan once the merits were objectively reasoned out and discussed.
The culture is one that is highly objective, where people are receptive to your ideas.”
What’s the coolest project you’ve worked on recently?
We have a lot of custom data visualization components, but one of the most interesting is our path visualization component. This component allows you to visualize a network topology graph representing many different concepts in networking, such as how a packet travels through the internet to reach a certain destination. The visualization itself is quite complex and interesting to work on technically, but we also have recently made efforts to move it from an SVG based rendering to canvas for performance reasons. The whole process of doing this migration was quite technically challenging and fun to work on, akin to graphics programming problems. One of the best things about ThousandEyes is the broad set of interesting technical problems to work on… there’s always something new and impactful to work on.
Describe your company culture in one word. What made you pick that word?
Aspirational. I picked this word because our company culture stems from the customers that we serve. Brightpearl customers are often successful brands or disrupters in their own markets looking to rapidly and fearlessly grow their business. This takes ambition, hard work and capability. Brightpearl looks and is actively recruiting for these qualities in our employees. A specific, real-life example of this is that our teams (Support, Professional Services, Customer Success, Finance, Product, Sales, Sales Engineering, Marketing) are all led by employees that started as individual contributors at Brightpearl. The culture of Brightpearl is built by the aspirations of our employees.
The culture of Brightpearl is built by the aspirations of our employees.”
How long have you been with the company, and what professional growth or development have you seen in that time?
I’ve been at Brightpearl for almost 4 years. It’s crazy to think about the shared tech space office that barely fit our dozen or so US employees at the time, in comparison to our brand new 10k plus square foot office. This rapid growth and scaling of a team has allowed me to be a part of something truly disrupting a market. For me as an Account Executive, this has meant transforming my very transactional approach into a more strategic one. Rapid scaling of a team has also given me opportunities to coach new hires, collaborate with other departments and create new content for our onboarding process. These opportunities have me prepared and excited for professional growth.
Describe your company culture in one word. What made you pick that word?
It’s hard to choose just one word, but I feel like ‘Respectful’ best describes the overall company culture at Stoplight in many different ways. The very first thing I noticed when I joined the team was that people are very respectful and open to hearing new ideas. The company is respectful of their employee’s work/life balance by allowing a flexible working schedule (not to mention flexible PTO), and by far the coolest thing is that Stoplight is respectful towards the environment! We are reducing our carbon footprint and are planting trees when you contribute to any of our open-source projects!
The very first thing I noticed when I joined the team was that people are very respectful and open to hearing new ideas.”
What’s the coolest project you’ve worked on recently?
Coming soon so I can’t give away too much, but we’re working on an exciting new feature, which has by far been the most fun and challenging project I’ve worked on. As designers, our main goal is to make a product simple and easy to use for our customers, which means we need to make sure we understand what we are designing. What has challenged me and has made me grow professionally is understanding the domain knowledge in the API space. Designers don’t always have the technical expertise, so it’s always a win when we learn something new that will help the end goal of our project. Stay tuned for more updates on the release of this project! Hint: It will help enforce standardization when designing APIs.
Describe your company culture in one word. What made you pick that word?
Dynamic. It takes a really dynamic team who are adept at multiple focus areas and concurrent workflows to constantly develop our processes and systems to better service our creators. A great example of this has been the release of our new ‘Vision Specification’ document, which captures all aspects of a project’s scope and ambition. The team has been developing and deploying that to live projects while looking after all aspects that are familiar to our creators.
I think anyone could learn something due to our expert network’s diversity and depth of knowledge.”
How long have you been with the company, and what professional growth or development have you seen in that time?
I have been with Gembah for 6 months now, and have come from 10 years working at Dyson. In that time, I have certainly developed from exposure to a broader view of product development categories, as well as through contact with our factory/expert network, who I think anyone could learn something from due to its diversity and depth of knowledge.
