Clio

I believe in a growth mindset. Instead of seeing my failures as setbacks, I see them as opportunities to learn. I value working hard, working smart, and being empowered to make great changes. This is the type of company that Clio is, and it has been a great fit for me.

Dev:

The dev culture here is fantastic. It's an A+ environment for any developer wanting to accelerate their development skills. They take quality very seriously and invest heavily in the developer process, from training, development tools, monitoring, and infrastructure. I can't overstate how much my development and communication skills have shot up by working here.

They have a great CI and CD pipeline. The deploy process here is one of the best I’ve seen. People are empowered and supported to deploy anytime themselves. This makes it easy and fast for people to drive out customer value.

For example, if I see a quality of life change I can make, or some bug that I know the solution to, I can make the fix for that, open a PR, get it reviewed, merged, and shipped all within an hour. I am not only supported in doing that, but the culture built here encourages and invests in that. That is value.

Additionally, they've invested heavily in making it easy to test out your changes. One example is they have invested in infrastructure to allow any developer to create a production-like beta instance with their changes with a single button click that they can test their changes on before shipping to production.

I've gotten to work a large variety of tasks and projects here, not only given to me but because I actively stretch myself and seek challenges out, and they respond to that.

People here care about best practices and try to follow them as much as they realistically can. We don't accept spaghetti code here, or untested code. If we see something that doesn't fit our quality bar on a PR, we reject it and are willing to take the time to make it better.

People:

The people are great. I really enjoy the people here and I look forward to coming to work. The people Clio hires are smart but also kind. They’re willing to work hard, collaborate, and do so with very low ego. They also know how to have fun.

Managers regularly have 1-on-1s with you to check in with you and see how you're doing. They care about feedback here and practice giving and receiving radical candor.

Product:

The product here is a web app targeted at making lawyers' lives easier, from client intake to the management of their entire practice. This is a product that has real impact on people. The work we do here improves the lives of lawyers, thereby allowing them to better improve the lives of real people. That is a satisfying feeling and thought on its own.

Couple that with the fact that Clio is the industry leader by a large mile; we have our own yearly conference that attracts speakers like Daniel Pink, Bryan Stevenson, Kelly McGonigal, and Chris Hadfield. We’re growing rapidly and getting great people from companies such as Amazon and Shopify. And we recently got a $250 million USD investment from an investment firm that also backed Netflix. It results in a very exciting time to work here.

Environment:

The environment is great here. They believe in a learning mindset here, and that is embodied from the top down. Instead of seeing setbacks, we see problems to solve and opportunities for learning. We’re not punished for our mistakes, but encouraged to learn from them.

People here are rewarded for working hard. People who do good work are publicly praised and honored. Promotions are given out if you are worthy of one, and many people often are.

It's not a place for slackers or people who just want it easy. You will be challenged here, but if you're the type that can handle and thrive in that, you will do well.

There is transparency to the leadership. They are open and approachable and vulnerable about their setbacks but also their successes. This makes me feel like I can approach any of them (and I can by booking a 1-on-1 with them).

The offices are great and heavily invested into as well, from standing desks, ergonomic chairs, snacks, strong communication technology, and social events.

Keep in mind that this is my singular perspective, but I honestly don’t have a single complaint. I probably come off like a shill with my praises, but this is how I feel.

The salary is great, the Calgary office is beautifully furnished and has great amenities (GoodLife-quality gym, pool table, lounge, free snacks and drinks).

I get to work in a flexible environment where you’re measured based on what you produce and not on whether you sit in the chair for 9-5. The people are fantastic and driven to work hard, and are low on ego.

I get to work on a product that is not only impactful to people but also a trailblazer in a technologically lagging industry.

A downside of being so engaged in work is that you sometimes overwork yourself and lose track of time. Sometimes the job calls for extra hours worked because it is needed.

For the most part, they’re great with alleviating that with 4 weeks (20 days) of vacation, responsible sick time, and benefits.

However, we do live in the real world. It's not all "Clio is Amazing" all the time. There is nuance to this. Sometimes they make mistakes with people and with projects. Sometimes bad code does go out, and sometimes there are failures that cause customer pain.

If you're not a high performer and can hustle, then you're not likely to last here. Not to say that they overwork you here, but there has to be an element of "killing it" and "hustle" that you bring.

If you're not performing up to par, they will have a conversation with you and try to work with you. But it has resulted in people being let go.

Additionally, this is also my take from the dev side. Maybe other departments or people don't feel the same way.

There is also growing pain as we scale fast and hard and learn how to operate at a bigger size.

But despite all this, and the reason I give them the praise that I have, is that they care. They care about the work they do, the people they have, and care enough to try to learn from their mistakes and do better.

Keep on keeping on