Moving country & joining a growing fintech
How it was and what I have learned
Choosing the right company
It was April 2019 when I first heard about Marshmallow. The company appeared on Glassdoor, while I was looking for promising fintech startups in Europe. I was on the lookout for companies that fulfilled a predefined criteria:
- Plenty of opportunities to learn (mentoring, books, events, etc);
- High chances of future success;
- Good engineering practices.
Marshmallow fulfilled all of them.
I’d had the desire to join a fast-paced working environment after leaving university — the idea of contributing across a variety of fields and learning at a rapid rate, always enticed me. I always believed that working in a startup would allow me to have a broader job function — expanding my skill-set.
The location of the company, London, was also a point of appeal. The city had always been one of my favourites, being, by far, the biggest tech hub in Europe; the world centre of fintech!
The hiring process
My first point of contact with the company was Oliver, one of the co-founders, and from there the hiring process was remarkably smooth. At every stage of the recruitment process, I had the opportunity to clarify existing doubts and have meaningful conversations about interesting themes with each of Marshmallow’s co-founders. In the end, this unique opportunity to get to know the company’s co-founders played an important role when choosing Marshmallow over another company.
Fortunately, the company also allowed me to join after delivering my master’s thesis, allowing a 4 month gap between the signing of the contract and my first day. This time frame helped facilitate my move from Lisbon, Portugal, to London, United Kingdom. It took about a month to get settled, so having this time was really valuable.
Joining the company
Joining a team of 30 employees as a fresh graduate, meant that the learning rate was, as expected, unbelievably fast-paced. Arriving with a master’s in Electrical and Computer Engineering equipped me with little to no knowledge in web services and microservices. Marshmallow understood that from the beginning. They had expectations about me that resonated with my technical skills at the time, and offered prospects that would reflect my preference for development. They nurture an environment where it’s easy for an employee to learn, providing resources like books, courses, facilitate attendance in events, etc. This approach is commonplace throughout the company; if you believe that something will make you a more productive, decisive and knowledgeable employee, independently of your area of expertise, you will have full support from the company to go for it.
In my case, this has so far included: 8 events, 4 books, and 3 online courses on topics as varied as entrepreneurship, finance and engineering (there is also the freedom to leave work earlier if there is an event somewhere in the city that you would like to attend). That’s on top of daily mentoring, constant feedback, and an openness to challenge and enquire. The first six months were nothing but a constant flow of information and methodologies, allowing me to refine and apply the new skills that I was learning.
Today
As of the date of writing this blog post, Marshmallow has grown to a team of, around, 60. Since I joined the number of employees has grown by almost 100% and we have plans to keep going! As we integrate ourselves with more comparison websites and continue our mission to provide instant, affordable and inclusive insurance to new market segments, our job as engineers is never finished. With customer satisfaction always in mind, new features continuously being developed and added to our services, we enjoy a collective feeling of accomplishment and ambition.
Although I’m an engineer I can still contribute to decisions being made in other areas such as human resources, product strategy, etc. This is possible because of the constant feedback loops that have been institutionalised and fostered by an openness that’s one of the company’s core values.
As an engineer, you have full ownership of the services that your team is developing, allowing you to have a high level of freedom in how you tackle a problem or approach building a new feature.
Looking back across my time at Marshmallow so far, I would choose the following as my biggest learning lessons:
- Embrace all learning opportunities (events, books, online courses) and be curious: I believe that hearing/reading other people lecturing about their area of expertise and having the opportunity to discuss different points of view is extremely useful for acquiring new knowledge.
- Ask for feedback: the fastest way for someone to improve is to be aware of their own flaws. I’ve found the best way for me to be aware of mine is to constantly seek feedback, particularly critical feedback. I have learned not to be afraid to ask for it, understanding that it will benefit me in the long term.
- Work with people from different areas: receiving input from product managers, analysts, data scientists and designers helped me to understand the bigger picture. I believe that my work became much more accomplished after I started absorbing this input, helping me make decisions that encompass a wider perspective.
- Be comfortable with working out of the comfort zone: if you are comfortable, it means that you are not making personal progress. When you are comfortable you already know the outcome of what you are doing and this limits your opportunity to learn.
Here at Marshmallow we believe that we are building a world where insurance benefits everyone. This means using technology to build products that are affordable, instant, and inclusive. With a culture that lets us as workers thrive, we believe that we are on the right path!
Onwards! 🚀
