Ready, Set, Go — Making an Impact in Your First Few Months at Wish

A look into the first projects of 4 team members

Kristina Wang
Wish Engineering And Data Science
4 min readFeb 22, 2018

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Image by Ruby Yeh

With so many tech companies and tech workers in the Bay Area, it would be easy to get lost in the fold at another company. This is not the case at Wish, where each one of our 350 employees makes a huge impact.

Although Wish is growing rapidly, we still retain a good deal of our startup company charm. Our relatively flat structure gives employees latitude to suggest ideas, and work closely with senior management to turn those ideas into reality.

Every employee at Wish has a chance to make their mark, right from the get-go.

Need proof? We asked four contributors at Wish about the first projects that they tackled when they came on board. If you’ve ever had a slow ramp-up at another company, their answers may surprise you.

Lorna
Product Designer

What she has to say:
“I came from a much bigger company. I was looking for a position with greater ownership and more responsibilities — as a designer, you want to be able to create and craft your own designs. Wish allows me to do that, to have my own voice.

One of the first projects I worked on was redesigning the shopping cart. I requested the project and Wish allowed me to work on it. How many people can say they joined a company and were immediately able to work on such a key area of an app?

When I started working on the shopping cart, it was not user-friendly. It was cluttered and it was difficult to process what you were seeing on the screen. The pricing, shipping, and billing information was arranged in such a way that it was overwhelming for the user. Overall I condensed information, removed unnecessary spacing, and prioritized what was important for the customer on the screen.

In the end, I was able to let millions of users see my work, and over the course of a few months our Gross Merchandise Value went up 2%. It was great to see my hard work pay off.”

Reni
Platform Product Manager

What he has to say:
“One of my first projects was working on merchant growth, and how to make merchants successful on our platform. We used full funnel analysis and dashboards to measure [the merchant onboarding and sales process]. We tracked everything and used data to strategize. In the end, we were able to double the rate at which merchants got their first sale.

I’m a quantitative guy, and I like that Wish is a data-driven company. Data allows employees to stay focused on the same goals and make decisions based on the same KPIs, even with their individual contributions.

In terms of business transactions, Wish is a big company. But they have truly been able to keep the startup pace. At Wish, you enjoy the speed and full responsibility of your projects. You see the passion in everyone’s work. Wish should be proud of this — I haven’t seen this in comparable companies, ever.”

Alireza
Android Engineering Lead

What he has to say:
“One of the first projects I worked on was our rewards system a.k.a. our loyalty program. The program gave customer rewards for performing various actions on the site, which would later turn into discounts that could be applied to their future purchases. It was a fun way for users to stay engaged with the site, and become engaged in new ways.

It was a major undertaking, and I worked on the project by myself as a newly-graduated engineer. It felt great to work on such a big task, and even better that the results were positive. Within a couple of weeks, there was a 2% increase in sales, a 2.5% increase in the number of unique buyers visiting the site, and a 2.5% increase in purchases completed. Over 2 years later, it is still one of our major features.”

Image by Ruby Yeh

Shiyu
Growth Data Analyst Intern

What he has to say:
“Wish treats interns like they are regular full time employees. This was not always the case in other internships that I’ve had. Before, I might have trouble getting permission to work on large impactful projects. At Wish, you get a lot of freedom. You are welcome to propose different strategies and they will listen to you as long as your strategies make sense.”

Image by Ruby Yeh

This is just a peek into some of the exciting projects you will have the opportunity to work on as a part of Wish’s dynamic team.

If you’re looking for a company where you can make a huge impact, check out our open positions here: https://jobs.lever.co/wish?lever-via=Te-nD12q0H

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