Vantaggi
I've had a 20+ year career post-college, and I can happily report that this is my favorite place to work in all of that time. David Bai, Head of Engineering / Co-Founder, is exactly what you want in a boss. He's super low stress, gives you a wide variety of problems to work on, works actively to remove blockers for the team. Daniel Betts, Sr. Software Engineer / Team Lead, is also what you want in a team lead, mostly focused on his own work, but able to provide technical critiques without coming across as confrontational, while also balancing the need to do it right, with the need for you to get things done. He's happy to pair with you on anything and provide clarification when a ticket doesn't have the necessary specificity. The rest of the engineering team is great, you're going to be hard-pressed to find a more socially adept engineering team. Lots of great self-deprecating humor, with a get stuff done attitude. Always happy to pair, and understands intuitively when to stop pairing and allow you to take things solo. Sean Torrevilla is the ultimate glue guy, takes care of everything from an office management perspective, and is the heart of the company. He does everything from hosting Trivia to ensuring you have everything you need is taken care of. He does it with an infectious spirit that is hard to match. Bob Aspell, Co-Founder, Head of HR, Head of Product Management, is thoughtful, decisive, and interested in getting to the heart of any customer experience issues with great alacrity. Vivek Shah, Co-Founder, CEO, is similarly nimble at doing a host of tasks, and gives the team a good vision for what we're ultimately trying to accomplish, namely, "Eliminating fear from Health Insurance". Vivek has taken direct critiques from me quite well about his over-involvement in tasks such as onboarding and has worked to hand off that work to others on his leadership team. If you like transparency, you're going to love SimplyInsured. Everything from your salary to your email inbox is open for everyone at the company to see. This might seem offputting to some, but I love knowing that everyone is being compensated fairly within the company. It is a bit of an adjustment setting up all of your email filters, but ultimately having whatever you want to know at your fingertips is powerful.
Svantaggi
Currently, we have Bob Aspell as the only person doing Product Management, and he's balancing those responsibilities with a ton of other responsibilities. Bob is great, but there needs to be someone dedicated full-time to Product Management. There is a lot of design work that get passed down to Engineering due to the fact that Bob is stretched so thin. That is scheduled to change with a new hire joining the team soon, but is definitely an impact. There are open challenges around conversion that the company has been fighting for a long time with some minor incremental improvements, but not the type of leaps forward you might hope for given that it's been a focus for quite some time.
