What We Are Looking For in a Technology Hire
I’m the most excited I’ve ever been about a startup and I have a bit of experience to compare against. In my past, I’ve joined 3 start-ups and co-founded a 4th (all with successful outcomes). Why am I this excited? Because Earnin is leading the charge to help make a difference. We have a great product that really helps, we’re addressing a problem that impacts a huge number of people, we have a stellar growth rate, and are building an amazing team comprised of some of the best engineers assembled at a startup.
What Makes Earnin Different
Earnin is a pretty good technology company aspiring to be a world-class technology company. We have outstanding people that work with a variety of modern technologies. We all have a desire to continually improve ourselves and help others on the team succeed. We’re developing a DevOps culture with bottoms-up decision-making that provides real ownership and empowerment to teams. Everyone at the company has the opportunity on a regular basis to have a serious impact on what we do and how we do it. These things are all great, but they aren’t really our biggest differentiator.
The thing that really makes Earnin an exceptionally great place to work is the fact that we are applying our craft to a solution with a huge social impact. There are a lot of other places people can go that will allow them to work with cool technology, on interesting technical problems, or with great people. It’s really hard to find a place where you can do all that and also have a positive, meaningful impact on people’s lives at scale. It’s part of the reason the team is so passionate about getting things right. When we do, our customers are truly grateful and appreciative. It’s really uplifting to read our app reviews on a daily basis. Even the few 1-star reviews are inspiring for us to do better because there’s a real person with a real need that we failed. It’s always motivating for us to do better. The icing on the cake is that we get to apply technology in innovative ways to make this great product work for people!
What I Look For When We’re Hiring
As a starting point, we want great engineers. However, to really be great there’s a lot more. We want people that are passionate, proactive, thoughtful, empathetic, and are good communicators. There are also two other key characteristics that great employees at Earnin bring to the table: curiosity and persistence. The desire to learn new things is really important, but you have to have the passion and grit to work through things and become great at them.
The reality is that the interview process can be hit or miss from a technical standpoint. Accessing and factoring in these qualities is something we’ve seen success with. In fact, sometimes the non-technical aspects are the deciding factors. We have some really impactful folks on the team that we might have missed out on if we didn’t take everything into account.
What Fuels the Innovation at Earnin?
Great ideas can come from anyone. That simple fact isn’t lost on us. We really want everyone to be thinking about how to make our product better and to avoid letting those great ideas fade away unspoken. Assuming the best ideas only come from a few at the top is a sure way to squander amazing potential for innovation.
To help make sure great ideas have a shot, we structure our planning process in a very bottom-up manner. Everyone on the team has a voice in deciding what that team will decide to do. We encourage every team to solicit ideas from everyone, try lots of things, and learn fast.
We’re also proud to empower our technology team and give them a voice, and this technology blog is an example of that. The fact is that they want to share the interesting things they’ve done here… and there’s plenty to share. So, I want to ensure they have every opportunity to do so.
If you match what I’m looking for and you’re interested in checking out opportunities at Earnin, visit the careers section of our website here.
