Thumbtack

I've personally grown much faster than I expected. I've learned as much about software engineering as I have about product decision-making, analytics, and project management—all as a new-grad hire.

Almost everyone here is exceptionally helpful and cooperative. The company is intensely mission-driven, and people are well-aligned with the company's vision.

People here are smart. With few exceptions, I am impressed by the caliber of team members here and the lengths they go to not only understand our customers, product, and market.

There is immense company growth potential. We are years ahead of even our biggest competitors in a market that, in the US alone, is worth $700 billion annually. There are few other tech companies that can even claim to have that much potential for growth—let alone a strong chance at realizing that potential.

Upper management is excellent. I rarely question the decisions made by executives about our team and our product because they are accessible, transparent about their reasoning, and deeply concerned with data-driven decision-making. At the same time, they seem to balance these traits with well-honed intuitions about how to make step changes in the product that take us in the right direction.

While the company has been receptive to feedback about career growth, it still has room for improvement. I realize catering to people's career growth needs is often in tension with team agility and bureaucracy minimization, but I think Thumbtack is capable of finding a better balance.

Given our ambitions, we need to grow our team more quickly than we currently are, without resorting to the pell-mell of hiring that was 2016. I think a crucial part of this will be polishing our brand and doing better at publicizing the great work we're doing here.

Trust your team members to take initiative. Give them space to own their work. Be a source of context and assistance.