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Culture Matters

Yesterday morning, my software engineering team and I learned that we would be moving into subleased office space on the fourth floor. In the afternoon, with little fanfare and only one cardboard box among us, we moved all our stuff down two floors. In full disclosure, I did offer to buy some at Staples across the street, but nobody really felt it necessary. I think our move exemplifies the kind of culture I want to build as we grow the engineering team: unfussy, collaborative, empowered, pragmatic.

The job market for software engineers in NYC is booming, so it is surprising to many candidates how much we care about team culture. We've declined to make an offer based on culture more here than anywhere else that I've conducted engineering interviews for.

There's certainly a "no assholes" rule around here, but our considerations go deeper than that. Ultimately, we want to hire people aligned with our company's values:
  • Entrepreneurial thinking and action
  • Doing things the right way
  • Teams providing great customer service
  • Decisions driven by data
There are times I wonder why we care so much about this culture stuff, when we have so much work to get done and so few people doing it now. But then we have a day where the team pulls together, like yesterday, and I'm reminded that it's so good to work with a team that has a great culture.

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