Canva

When I joined Canva, I had exactly zero experience with building cloud applications that operate at scale. I found the senior engineers to be extremely open and generous with their time. I feel like my first 6 months to 1 year at Canva was a real bootcamp, and I learned an incredible amount, both in terms of practical skills and experience, but also approaches to thinking through difficult problems. I really love Canva's approach to mentoring new starters.

The food is amazing. Perks are great. Flexibility is great. I've met and worked with plenty of amazing people. The environment is very social if you want it to be. There is a club for everything. The company has a lot of positive impacts around the world.

It can be a very intense place to work. This is challenging from a work-life balance perspective. It is also a relatively chaotic environment, and this doesn't work for everyone. The company is having some expected growing pains. There is still a lack of clarity regarding ownership and direction of many areas.

Make sure you take the time to get to know people.

Understand that it is very challenging for people to feel comfortable/safe enough to give you direct, open, and honest feedback. There are no easy answers here, except spending the time to build trust and psychological safety.

Sort out some of the basic company processes ASAP:

• Performance reviews
• Internal transfers
• Giving feedback to management