Merit Values in Engineering
At Merit, we live a set of company values that we believe in. We use them to remind ourselves to hold ourselves to a high standard of who we want to be.
Within our Engineering team, these values have their own spin on how we work with and treat each other.
Everyone is a friend, even if they don’t know it yet
We believe in treating everyone as a friend first, from the moment we have our first interaction — whether it’s a 1:1 pitch call with an Eng lead, a phone screen technical interview, or a coffee shop meetup.
When a candidate engineer is a friend, you want them to succeed. You aren’t there to play the “bad boss” trope — silently judging and wait for a fail — you are supportive, encouraging, and genuinely excited when the candidate does well.
And when a new hire starts, it’s only natural that we are glad that an old friend has come to join us in our journey, so we celebrate.
Building a network of truth and trust
At Merit, we’re building a network of truth and trust, but not just in our platform.
Trust in each other in Engineering and between teams like Product, Marketing, and GTM is really critical to encourage and foster innovation and ownership.
And you can’t have trust without truth. We are honest with each other, through good and difficult conversations. This feeling of no politics, always knowing everyone is showing their best self is really special, and I think quite powerful.
Measure to meaningfully improve
This is a value that’s most obviously applied to analytics and business goals, but it actually spreads a lot further than that.
For example:
- Leave policies that are measured not to check that you’ve taken too much time off, but to ensure you’re taking enough to live a full life.
- Performance reviews that have a sole goal of working out ways to continually improve together
- Work that is tracked by real output, not gamified “lines of code” or any other arbitrary measurement that doesn’t help us achieve our goals
A rising tide lifts all boats
Perhaps my favourite value, and one that I connect with deeply.
This expression means to me, that if we focus on raising the whole team at once, instead of focusing on selfish and individual goals, in the end, we all do much better.
We look for givers, over high-performance takers. The stereotypical “rockstar” engineer that has no time for knowledge sharing or teamwork doesn’t fit into our culture.
We take the time to teach others first, because we know it all comes back many times over in the long run.
We celebrate the success of others, because all success is our own success too. Show-and-tell sessions at the end of every sprint are a really uplifting celebration of all the great stuff that happens from all members of the company.
Engineering at Merit
Working as an engineer at Merit has been the most fulfilling ~18 months of my professional career, and by some margin.
Funnily enough, this isn’t because of the exceptional opportunity that Merit has presented me for personal growth, or the product that boggles my mind with its potential.
It’s because of the culture, and the values that are behind that culture. It’s because we live that culture every day, and it means the world to me.
If you’re looking for new opportunities, please reach out or check out our careers page; we’d love to meet a new friend.
