Benchling

Culture is one of the hardest things to get right, and Benchling has hit so much of it on the head. The first thing I'm consistently impressed by is how much people genuinely care about the mission. Not just raising money or becoming profitable, but transforming the way life science research is done, and thereby contributing to better medicine at a lower cost. Many of the employees, including both of the founders, came from biology research, where they saw first-hand the many problems plaguing the field.

Some other aspects of culture that stand out:

• An incredibly high degree of thoughtfulness (this comes through in ad-hoc discussions, company all-hands, and a multiple-day company retreat we do every year).
• Tight-knit team: We have a culture of doing frequent 1:1s with people across the company. I have 7 recurring 1:1s, and frequently spontaneously ask others as well.
• Nearly all the feedback I've given has been genuinely listened to and appreciated.
• It is okay to admit mistakes and failures, and leadership regularly sets an example.

For the work itself: I work as a software engineer, and the work is extremely interesting. As someone who doesn't have a background in biology, I'm relishing the opportunity to learn how the field operates. Not only do I pick this up from talking with PMs and sitting in on customer calls, I've also gotten to collaborate significantly with designers and even marketing. My days are 9:30-6:30, and I've only been asked to work overtime once or twice a year. I couldn't ask for a better place to work. And if I could, I'd be confident that we would work together to address my feedback.

The main con, which everyone is aware of, is the average lack of experience across the team, especially in engineering and leadership. One of the ways this comes out is that a lot of the learning comes from peers and on the job, rather than through more developed career growth paths.

Compounding this problem, many of the early employees bear a lot of responsibilities that they ideally wouldn't in order to focus on higher-leverage activities.

As to what we're doing about it, we're currently hiring especially for experienced leadership, and the founders estimate that up to a third of their time is spent on that because it's so important.

For example, these leadership positions include VP of Engineering, VP of Sales, and Head of People Operations, in addition to a number of front-line positions.

People are by far the most important reason for our success. Keep showing the entire company that people matter. Even if it's clear to you that you think that way, it may not be clear to everyone else.