Embodying our Values when it matters most: Meet our Values All-Star, Polina Soshnin

It became clear to Polina Soshnin how values-driven she was at a young age. From her upbringing in Alaska to her university experience, she’s always been motivated by a deep-rooted sense of values and meaning. In fact, it was a competitive environment in college that prompted her to switch from an economics major to computer science. “When I moved to the Computer Science program it was a completely different environment,” she says. “We were all starting from zero and coming from different backgrounds, and the department was collaborative, not cutthroat,” she explains.

Because Polina was the first in her family to attend college, her environment during university was crucial to her success. “Being in a space where it was encouraged to ask for help and solve problems collaboratively made me succeed in my studies,” she says. The values her department embodied — collaboration, mutual support, acceptance, and diversity — all led her to be successful in school and later in her career.

In the first few years of working as a full-time engineer, Polina developed a firm sense of what she values in a work environment — and it turns out, she values strong values. “When I started to look for my next career move and ended up at Chime, I wanted to be sure to find a place I could keep living aligned with the beliefs I’d developed,” she says.

So it’s no surprise that understanding Chime’s values were a big part of the interview process for Polina, when she asked everyone questions about the company culture and how our values manifest in the day-to-day. The values she was looking for came through and after a year of working at Chime, Polina was recently named a Values All-Star of 2020.

“It’s extremely fulfilling and motivating to work somewhere that espouses values that align with your own,” she explains. “I love working at Chime because there’s great alignment between my personal values and the company.”

Leading — and following — by example

According to Polina, Chimers infuse our values into daily life so well because of the work environment we’ve crafted. By making them accessible and applicable, we help Chimers feel both empowered by our values and put them into practice. “I see Chimers leading and following by example with our values every day,” Polina says.

When it comes to leading by example, Polina puts our Make It Happen and Team Up values into practice often. As a project lead, she oversees her team’s planning, workloads, and generally ensures things go according to plan. “I try to make it happen for my teammates by being creative and going out of my way for the projects to be successful,” she says. “We team up to bring projects across the finish line.”

In Polina’s daily work, that might look like helping write a QA plan or providing extra documentation to support customer-facing teams after a launch. “Our values encourage me to go the extra mile to make our work successful and, ultimately, make doing the work more enjoyable!” she says.

Valuing a member obsession

As a developer, Polina has to remind herself that she has a responsibility to consider the downstream effects of the work she does. Being Member-Obsessed 💚 helps her with this — she’s always thinking about the features and changes made that might impact members in different ways.

“In my role, staying member-obsessed helps me promote end-to-end software ownership,” she explains. “Once your software is shipped to production, it’s easy to move on to the next project — instead, we need to take it a step further and own the lifecycle of our code in production,” she says. To do that, developers need an understanding of how users are in fact using the product — something being member-obsessed helps Chime developers do.

“By developing a deep understanding of our members, we’re able to build context for why we’re building the products we’re shipping and the impact they’ll have on our members,” Polina says. “I love being an active part of a culture where we’re creating a feedback loop. It always tells us whether we’re providing value for our members — after all, what I care about is impacting people through the work I do. The fact that Chime’s values are aligned with that and support me and all Chimers in creating positive cycles and outcomes for our members is a wonderful cycle.”

We sure think so, too. Congratulations to Polina on being a Values All-Star of 2020!