The chance to work on big bold projects? A mission-driven approach? Perks to end all perks? There are a number of factors that candidates weigh when considering a career change. Jobseekers have updated their resumes, scoured job listings and secured unimpeachable references. So what can they expect in return for their efforts?
While monetary compensation is, well, just that — howling “that’s what the money is for” like Don Draper is probably even less likely to help companies attract and retain talent now than it was in the 1960s. Thankfully, prospective employees these days can expect more from employers than a stern nod, a Canadian Club whiskey neat and the injunction to count their lucky stars that they’re employed at the Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency in Manhattan.
So which are the qualities that set a successful and attractive modern workplace apart?
For some, it’s as simple as the people. Hai Yen Duong, senior U.S. partner for marketing tech company Botify, thinks the opportunity to join a remarkable team is the most important selling point a company can make.
“I’m genuinely impressed by the people I work with – their intelligence, work ethic and support,” said Duong. “On top of that, they’re so knowledgeable, down to earth and fun to be around. I feel so inspired and lifted by those around me.”
For others like Ashley Kiolbasa, senior director product marketing, the ideal workplace may be more about respecting work-life balance. At Signifyd, Kiolbasa has found that a four-day workweek allows for more personal time and greater wellbeing — as well as greater productivity and team cohesion during the week.
Built In NYC reached out to 13 hiring companies to learn more about the rewarding work, desirable perks, the star employees and the cultures and policies that make these workplaces stand a cut above the rest.
What they do: nate is a fintech company offering a mobile app that allows users to consolidate all of their online shopping into a one private interface. With the nate app, consumers can share shopping lists; buy and gift products and save potential purchases from online retailers.
A product that sells itself: “As someone who is admittedly guilty of spending too much time online shopping, I was extremely excited on a personal, consumer level when I first came across the job posting and started learning more about nate,” said Creator Program Marketing Associate Caroline Jones. “The more I learned, the more excited I got about the idea of getting to be a part of the nate team in the early stages and contributing to the building of a business that meets the needs of consumers in a way that’s never been done before.”
A team that is all-in: “I feel that it’s very special and rare to find a job where you love both the work that you do and the people that you work with. After speaking to numerous employees throughout the interview process and hearing the way they spoke about each other and what it was like to work at nate, I felt like I had found a job opportunity that offered both of those things.”
Care at the company’s core: “In line with one of the company’s core principals, ‘self care isn’t selfish,’ nate offers its employees a monthly stipend to spend on anything wellness related. This principle is something that resonates with me personally, because I had to learn the hard way that you can’t take care of anyone else until you take care of yourself.”
“In many startup environments and workplaces in general, self care often takes the back seat in the face of projects, deadlines, pressure and stress. I truly feel that giving people the encouragement and the resources they need to prioritize self care each month creates a much happier, more enjoyable and higher-performing work environment.”
What they do: Using wearable safety technology, data science and predictive analytics, StrongArm Technologies delivers insights to manage risk and reduce workplace injuries. The company offers a machine learning platform and IoT devices that measure and analyze risk factors of industrial workers on the job to prevent musculoskeletal injuries.
Tackling problems at pace: “When I started working on the mobile team, we had a fairly raw product that the mobile team was determined to update and convert to a new platform,” said Vincent Turnier, senior engineer, mobile. “This project was estimated to take about a year. Within six months, we had a brand new application in the field that functioned vastly better and was capable of collecting relevant information from our technology that helped us track potential bugs and undesired behavior.”
“I am inspired that, as a team, we’re not afraid to tackle big problems like this, fixing issues quickly and cleanly until we succeed. Plus, we have the flexibility to work on things that matter to us as individuals to advance our careers and the company.”
Growing by leaps and bounds: “I’ve been on the mobile team at StrongArm for almost three years now. I joined right after our Series A fundraising, when the team was about 25 people, and I’ve seen us grow tremendously. We’ve now raised our Series B and our technology stack keeps growing and improving. I’ve stayed here because I love that we are innovators at heart and that, when problems arise, we tackle them head on.”
A focus on personal development: “The coolest project I’ve worked on recently is an Android application that can live stream data from our safety sensors to our mobile app to the website. It broadcasts that information to a back end, which distributes the data to any websites that are listening for it.”
“Projects like this have helped me solidify and improve on a lot of the skills that I’ve developed throughout my career, and I am continuing to develop in areas like code organization, creating reusable pieces of code, practicing clean architecture and so on. Because we all get the opportunity to continue to innovate in our roles, other teams are always interested in what we do.”
What they do: A tech company focused on improving the quality of patients’ healthcare experience, Zocdoc operates an online platform that allows users to book in-person and telemedicine appointments, evaluate their experiences with medical professionals and pair with the appropriate doctors and healthcare professionals for their needs.
A mission-based approach: “I’ve spent most of my career in the healthcare space, and it’s important to me to work for a mission-driven company,” said Flora Cheng, senior product manager. “I was initially drawn to Zocdoc’s mission to give power to the patient and to build a better healthcare experience. I have been a Zocdoc user for many years and was excited for the opportunity to directly influence the product.”
A lifetime of learning: “Throughout my interview experience, I was increasingly impressed by the product culture and the clear vision the organization has been working toward, which solidified my desire to join the company. In one of my interviews, our VP of product told me that ‘Zocdoc has been a learning organization’ – referencing the company rallying together through any challenges that it’s faced, including business model changes and the Covid-19 pandemic. I was excited by this, and the product-driven culture and clear company vision. I’ve been at Zocdoc for a year now, and I’m still continuously learning!”
Diving deeply and sharing broadly: In her role as senior product manager, Cheng is primarily focused on improving patients’ appointment experience and driving reengagement with Zocdoc’s platform. She works in close collaboration with product design, analytics and engineering teams, conducting in-depth analysis and identifying solutions to enhance users’ experiences.
“It has been really fun to work on since there are many opportunities and trade-offs to consider. Recently, we launched a series of A/B tests to identify the best ways, small and large, to improve appointment realization. It’s been interesting and rewarding, seeing how our experiments impact booking conversion and appointment realization and conducting tradeoff analysis to drive decisions. Through regularly scheduled business review meetings, I’ve been able to share our learnings with stakeholders and executives. At Zocdoc, I’ve felt empowered to drive product decisions based on analytics and user research.”
What they do: Botify is a SaaS company that offers an end-to-end SEO management solution.
A personnel approach: “For me, it’s always the people. When evaluating my next career move, there are several factors I look at: growth opportunities, the company’s trajectory and the product itself,” said Hai Yen Duong, senior U.S. partner manager. “Still, it’s the people who ultimately shape my experience at a company and, therefore, my primary consideration. With Botify, the decision was a no-brainer.”
“When my current manager reached out to me about an open opportunity at Botify, I already knew a couple of people from my previous jobs. This gave me a glimpse into the company and its culture from multiple trusted sources. Throughout the interview process, I was blown away by everyone I met. They all seemed to be genuinely happy to be here and excited about the company’s future. I knew it was the right fit for me.”
A wave of the wand: “Fast forward a couple of months later, here I am at Botify. The initial magic hasn’t faded but instead magnified. I’m genuinely impressed by the people I work with – their intelligence, work ethic and support. On top of that, they’re so knowledgeable, down to earth and fun to be around. I feel so inspired and lifted by those around me.”
A propitious partnership, a supportive structure: Duong is currently working with Botify’s head of partnerships and the company’s account executives on an ongoing project in partnership with Salesforce: “I like this strategic partnership because of its potential to drive significant business value to Botify and all the go-to-market initiatives surrounding it.”
“Partnering with a large company such as Salesforce is relatively new to me, so it’s exciting to learn how to navigate the complexities that come with it. That said, it’s encouraging to have so much internal support from the different departments. The sales team is incredibly receptive to partnerships and often involves us in their deals. Currently, many open opportunities are either partner-sourced or partner-influenced – lots in the pipeline from the partnership angle. It’s great to see the work I do and what the partnership team does being impactful to the business in a very tangible way.”
What they do: Ocrolus is a document automation platform that combines process automation and human-in-the-loop review to offer intelligent analytics, improved loan decisioning, enhanced fraud detection and automated document review processes.
Real problems, robust solutions: “Ocrolus is quickly becoming an integral piece of the fintech lending infrastructure. When I first learned about the company and met the team, I was immediately struck by how real the problem we’re trying to solve is and how technology can truly solve this problem in a novel way,” said Zach Haehn, vice president, engineering.
“We combine deep learning and automation techniques with human-in-the-loop verification to produce a more accurate result than our competitors. Being in a highly-competitive and dynamic industry creates many opportunities for innovation directly from the engineering team. All of this, combined with a dedicated and helpful group of engineers who push each other to hone their craft, makes Ocrolus a great place to work and grow.”
Cracking down on fraudsters: “In the lending industry, fraud is of particular concern to our customers because there’s a chance they’ll never see their money again! We’re developing new, proprietary ways to evaluate documents and detect changes. Because we see so many different types of documents from a wide array of financial institutions every day, we use the context from those documents to spot potential forgeries and highlight areas of concern for our customers.
A sense of ownership: “Really owning a project from end to end allows the team to think holistically about what they’re doing and meet directly with customers to get rapid feedback, which is very validating for engineers.”
What they do: With its e-commerce fraud protection platform, Signifyd offers revenue protection, abuse prevention and payment compliance. The company uses its automated end-to-end fraud detection solution to help sellers online reduce chargebacks, customer dissatisfaction from mistaken declines and operational costs resulting from manual transaction investigation.
From a little acorn to a large oak: “Working at Signifyd has been the professional growth opportunity of a lifetime,” said Senior Director Product Marketing Ashley Kiolbasa. “It’s hard to know what you are really walking into as a new employee, but I feel so grateful that I landed here in an environment where I have the freedom and support to test new ideas, an all-star go-to-market team that is never too busy to partner and brainstorm and leaders who really care about my growth.”
Achieving a better balance: “It doesn’t get better than a four-day workweek. Signifyd really cares about the health and well-being of its employees, and that is obvious by the support and innovation from our HR team through all of the programs they roll out. They know that our high-performing team is always going to leave it all on the field, Monday through Thursday. It’s so nice to have my day on Friday to knock out all my errands or peacefully plan for the next week and have my weekends just for fun.”
What they do: CB Insights is a market intelligence platform that offers analyses of venture capital, startups, patents, partnerships and tech news. The company’s platform, previously known as ChubbyBrain, looks at thousands of data points to give users personalized real-time insights into fast-growing companies.
Big problems, bigger solutions: For Karl Kong, vice president product, the allure behind joining the CB Insights team was the opportunity to tackle serious problems and to leverage technology in novel ways. “I joined CB Insights because of our customers. They work on the most fascinating problems for the world’s leading companies and investors. How are biometrics changing digital wallets? Who’s the market leader in computer vision? And what’s going to disrupt grocery stores first: robot chefs or ghost kitchens?”
A culture of innovation: “That said, I stay because of the culture. We build fast. One day you’re building a fake button to test out a potential feature, a few weeks later you’re releasing a rough prototype, and soon after you’re plotting how to grow adoption 1,000 fold. The pace can be intense, but as a product manager you learn and invent a tremendous amount.”
Complete with a theme song: Every couple of quarters we throw a Hack Day, and hands down, it’s the best day of the year. Not only do our product and engineering teams get a whole 24 hours to build something totally off script—a few of which have gotten shipped to customers!—but also the whole company gets involved. Projects have ranged from reimagining our search UX to creating a new integration to predicting mathematically when lunch deliveries will arrive to recreating our office in Roblox to knitting new swag.
What they do: Bizzabo’s Event Experience OS allows users to plan in-person, virtual and hybrid events. From conception through execution, the company’s platform helps users engage audiences, activate communities and deliver on business outcomes.
Leadership with a personal touch: “I will never forget my first Thursday at Bizzabo back in January 2020. I was in the office between onboarding classes, and all of a sudden, our CEO, Eran, came walking up to me and said: ‘Katie, we’re so happy to have you! Sorry, I haven’t gotten a chance to say hello sooner – how has your first week been going?’ At that moment, I knew that this company was home,” said Katie Bensink, senior business development.
“It’s almost unheard of for a business development representative to speak with the CEO of any company during their first week (or month, for that matter), let alone have them go out of their way to welcome you personally and see how you like things so far. When they speak about the BizzaValues and culture at this company, that’s what they mean!”
A chance to recharge: “My favorite perk at Bizzabo has to be our quarterly BizzaBreaks and Mental Health Days! It’s so refreshing to work for a company that recognizes the importance of recharging your mental battery and provides a way to do so without sacrificing PTO or sick days. There’s no doubt that the company practices what they preach with #WeCare.”
What they do: Founded in 2013, LoanStreet operates an online platform that allows credit unions, banks, direct lenders and loan investors to share, manage and create loans.
Strength and humility: “What attracted me to LoanStreet was the strength of the business idea and the fact that the team seemed so strong,” said Larry Adams, vice president of engineering. “Every person I met was kind and humble, while also being incredibly competent and focused on execution.”
A focus on development: “I’ve stayed because of the opportunities for growth, the focus on professional development and the success of the business itself. I started as a senior engineer, was promoted to director and now I’m the vice president of engineering. There are examples of internal promotions and mobility all over the company. We’re now eight times larger since I’ve joined, with many people who’ve been here for years like myself. Even with our tremendous growth, there is still a heavy emphasis on professional development and team collaboration. ”
Trying times, tearful testimonials: “Our Paycheck Protection Program product during the pandemic helped underserved communities access the government’s complicated website to get PPP loans. We built that product in a week. It was extremely successful and satisfying to receive the appreciative emails from members of our clients – credit unions – and hear directly from them – in some cases with tears of gratitude – that they were able to get loans because of our technology. It was the first product I helped launch as vice president of engineering, and I was incredibly proud of how the team came together to make it happen.”
What they do: Transfix operates a digital freight marketplace. The company’s “Intelligent Freight Platform™” product connects shippers to a national network of more than 28,000 carriers.
Won over by values: “I wasn’t looking for a new opportunity when Graham Ashcraft, director of people at Transfix, reached out to me to ask if I’d be interested in interviewing for the position. I knew Graham from my previous work, and I knew that he shared my values and would only work for a company that shared them as well,” said Lisa Rossi, director, talent acquisition.
Rossi was won over by Transfix’s values and the ways in which the company was remedying chronic supply chain problems. “The more I learned about what is so broken in our supply chain, the more I learned about Transfix’s already clear impact, growth plans and trajectory, and the more I learned about the people I’d be working with, the more of a no-brainer joining this organization became.”
Access, product and principles: “I specifically remember meeting with Lily Shen, our CEO, as well as Mike Brittain, our vice president of engineering, and just being so impressed by both of their passion for talent and growing diverse, inclusive, equitable teams that challenge each other and ships great product. I thought: ‘I would be so valued here. I need to get on this ride before tickets are sold out. This is where I need to be.’”
An “aha!” moment: “As the director of talent acquisition, I am motivated to meet our hiring and growth goals, but my cup is truly filled when I get to meet all of our new hires and see their impact. Part of maximizing that impact from my seat is helping continue and advance diversity, equity, inclusion and justice in our interviewing, hiring and people engagement practices.”
“We recently implemented candidate experience training for all Transfixers, which centers around structure, expectation setting (and meeting!), empathy, fairness, speed and addressing unconscious bias in the interview process. Seeing those ‘aha!’ moments as new hires engage with each other in this roundtable-style training each week has been a powerful reminder of the importance of our work and of the incredible teams we’re building.”
What they do: With more than 400 employees servicing clients in North America, Central America, Europe, Australia and Japan, Movable Ink’s SaaS email technology allows marketers to dynamically change and personalize their messaging in real-time depending on a customer’s behavior.
Perspective and people: “Throughout my more than 20 years in NYC tech, I have come to the conclusion that Movable Ink checks all boxes of the things that are most important to me in a company,” said Senior Site Reliability Engineer Ray Rodriguez.
“First and foremost, Movable Ink hires genuinely good people. As a company, we have a high emotional intelligence.”
Working at pace and scale: “From an engineering standpoint, Movable Ink has a unique combination of interesting engineering challenges paired with a platform that allows you to move quickly and build scalable solutions. The engineering setup fosters a sense of productivity and a constant positive feedback loop. I can produce solid work, and it directly impacts our systems reliability, uptime and ultimately our customer experience.”
Empowering and supporting a team: “Movable Ink is a company that really values its employees and is always looking for ways to empower us and help us be the best version of ourselves – both at work and outside of work – by providing more activities (in-office and remote) than you can imagine. I’ve always felt respected and cared for as an employee and a person. It makes it really easy to care about Movable Ink when you know Movable Ink cares about you.”
What they do: Shapeways is a digital manufacturing platform offering 3D printing manufacturing solutions. Using custom software, a wide selection of materials and technologies and global supply chain, Shapeways is able to lower manufacturing barriers and speed delivery of quality products.
Making dreams come true: “Every day the commercial team has the ability to help companies, big and small, with a great idea bring that notion to life,” said Steve Weart, director of customer success. “And to watch this process happen over and over, and to truly see a business owner able to iterate their product and bring it to market, brings a smile to my face every time.”
“I have been with Shapeways now for almost four years and have seen a ton of changes from being a more B2C company to growing into a publicly-traded B2B focused company. But one thing that has never changed here at Shapeways is the interaction with customers from the service side. In the end Shapeways have enabled so many people and organizations to have their dreams become a reality, and I really value that as an employee.”
Important projects, serious partnerships: “We recently helped develop medical drones that will assist with serving customers who are considered in the ‘last mile’ of civilization. I’ve also helped develop new accessibility devices with Microsoft.”
“Shapeways’s end-to-end solution helps the end users achieve what they would otherwise not be able to with any of our competitors. Both of these projects helped me grow professionally since they were developed over a couple of quarters and required project management needs that are not in my normal scope of work.”
What they do: Laika is an end-to-end compliance solution combining automated workflows, guided expertise, integrated audits and more.
Transparency, integrity and impact: “The key driver behind my decision to join Laika, and the number one reason I have been here for six months, is the culture of transparency,” said Shivani Sood, senior recruiter. “As a recruiter and an employee, visibility into business outcomes and strategies can have an enormous impact on a person’s motivation levels. Laika walks the walk when it comes to living their values of inclusivity and integrity among others.”
“At our weekly all-hands meetings, all business leaders come forth and share accomplishments and wins as well as challenges and misses. The management team shares updates on org-level policies and also discusses their rationale behind any changes – operational or procedural. The environment of transparency, accountability and humility keeps you grounded while inspiring you to go that extra mile. And all of that translates to our performance as an organization.”
The tools to succeed: “My top two favorite benefits at Laika are unlimited PTO and remote work – with opportunities to meet your colleagues in person as well – both as they relate closely with a healthy work-life balance. I am a firm believer in living a full well-rounded life. Work satisfaction comes from working hard toward outcomes you care about, and productivity is a result of a refreshed mind that has ample opportunity to rest and reset.”
“When planning a vacation, not having to worry about PTO balance if you get sick at a later point, for example, brings with it a peace of mind that leads to efficiency. It’s a virtuous circle – building a trustworthy team that knows how to get things done and having a team that is self-motivated because they are able to enjoy a full life!”
