Brex

A prosperous growth-stage company, surprisingly resilient into the pandemic. It thinks progressively about the future of work, with its leaders active in shaping change instead of following it. For now, there are plenty of greenfield opportunities.

One of the best in terms of risk-taking flexibility. It didn't have to worry too much about balancing family-oriented financial responsibilities and startup risks because of the way the founders made decisions around both remote work conditions and equity-based compensation flexibility.

Engineering processes and decisions are pretty solid for the stage. A scrappy company that hires scrappy people.

1. Level-setting disregards experience, is somewhat arbitrary. There's a guideline, but limited opportunities to do work outside a silo. Decision-making falls back due to inertia on initial employees. Natural forces work against career growth at the higher levels.

2. Some ambiguity exists on what's next when completing a project. We're slowly getting better at planning, so this is not a concern.

3. Human connections outside the immediate team are an active work in progress. That's probably common with most companies in this era.

1. Most startups at this stage over-index on building growth ladders for mid-level to senior, but don't recognize that the higher end of the level is fundamentally a different job, not just doing the same thing better, faster, or more.

The way the company has mitigated this on the highest end of levels is by beating competitors on greenfield development and compensation. Those are great, of course; we can do even better by being a thought leader on what it means for someone who has multiple opportunities to pick this place for the nature of work itself.

Experienced non-manager engineers are looking for decision-leadership opportunities independently of the authority structure; let's build that channel.

1. The relationships are too hierarchical. Director and above levels should make a stronger effort building direct relationships with people two or more levels below.

Due to the remote culture, this is more difficult, but the cultural value of being accessible to individuals as a leader should not be underestimated.