Databricks

Even as a large and growing company, Databricks has retained a lot of the fast-moving and exciting aspects of a startup:

• Fast product development
• Energy in initiatives for improvement
• Opportunities for learning and making an impact

The culture is very collaborative, both at a team level and across the organization. I've always found my teams well-bonded, and it's pretty easy to reach across to other orgs when you need outside help.

Databricks moves quickly, and you're expected to as well. For some, that's a plus, and it means you have chances to grow and prove yourself. That said, as management has matured over the years, it's also become easier to get the time you need to maintain a work-life balance.

It also doesn't hurt that the business is doing incredibly well, has tons of funding, and is behind some of the biggest open source projects out there.

Employees are expected to learn and execute quickly and assume ownership of things.

In such a culture, it's easy for a new employee to feel like they need to figure out how to swim by themselves. That's not the case: it's great to ask for help. However, you often have to ask for what you need, not wait for someone to reach out.

Databricks has and continues to grow quickly, nearly doubling in most years. That's great overall, but it does introduce constant change and growing pains. I'd say they've been managed pretty well. It helps when I view this as exciting, not stressful.

Overall, keep up the awesome work on leadership, communication, and execution.

My main request is to watch out for culture divergence. We're getting to a size at which different orgs within the company are diverging more noticeably in culture and goals, so building more links across orgs will be important.