Each year, the average amount of time an employee stays with their current employer decreases.
In 2020, the average amount of time an employee stayed with their current employer was approximately 4.1 years, according to a survey conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Further, the survey found that the main reason for this decrease was due to the lack of growth opportunities available to employees.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. If you’re looking for a thriving career with ample growth opportunities, Built In LA rounded up 11 hiring companies that place their employees on a path toward success by prioritizing growth opportunities. From divvyDOSE to FabFitFun, Slickdeals and more, we caught up with company leaders to gain some insight into why they love their respective companies and what they’re most excited to accomplish in their roles.
What they do: Greentech company Enervee empowers users to choose the most efficient products and to make every buying decision an energy-smart buying decision.
As a tenured employee, what has been the biggest reason you’ve stayed at your company so long?
I have been with the company for over three years now and very happy with my decision to join Enervee from day one. The culture of the company is the biggest reason why I remain excited and engaged.
People in the company are not judgmental — they are patient, explain things and truly want you to grow in your profession. I also like that everyone is from different parts of the world with diverse interests, backgrounds and knowledge. People just don’t talk about work but also talk about life, hobbies, travel, activities and other things they are interested in. I love learning more about my coworkers and enjoy the camaraderie, especially when we volunteer or simply get together to discuss shows, books, pets, among other things.
Our company does not only care about profits. We care about the planet and our mission, and I really like that everyone in the company is so passionate about bringing it to life.
We care about the planet and our mission, and I really like that everyone in the company is so passionate about bringing it to life.”
Looking to the future, what excites you most about where your company is headed?
I am excited about the new initiatives we’re launching, which are geared to help benefit the underprivileged. It’s very important to me that we help those who are less fortunate. Technology-wise, I am learning all the time because we change and improve things constantly. We just started using the latest version of Angular and I like that. It helps keep my knowledge and skills current. All our projects for 2021 are exciting for me right now — they help me personally, are good for the planet and will be impactful for many consumers.
What they do: FloQast provides corporate accounting departments with close management software.
What was the deciding factor for you when you accepted your job at your current company?
Changing careers isn’t an easy thing to do, especially when accounting is what you’ve studied and practiced for over a decade. But, the move felt right for me personally since closing the books wasn’t what I envisioned doing for yet another decade. In 2015, FloQast Co-Founder and CEO Mike Whitmire showed up at Ruckus Wireless to pitch us FloQast and how it’d help me better manage the close. Right away, it was easy to see the passion Mike had for not just being an accountant, but also an entrepreneur. My personal affinity to achieve a similar level of success took over in the first 10 minutes of the demo, and I actually asked Mike to break down how he started the company, funding and how the idea came to fruition.
Fast forward a few quarters and I’m a happy client doing reference calls for prospective FloQast customers, yet the urge to explore the world outside of accounting began to take over. Choosing FloQast was a no-brainer since I knew it would allow me to learn several new critical skills across sales, product and go-to-market functions without losing my accounting knowledge. The cheesy line I tell my mom at times: I got a chance to jump off a cliff with a parachute on.
I look forward to continuing coaching, teaching and mentoring the team while also applying a forward-thinking approach to get to the promised land.”
Looking to the future, what excites you most about where your company is headed?
Having been a part of FloQast since the beginning, I am most excited about growing the organization to a standalone public company with tens of thousands of clients. The level of growth we’ve already experienced is difficult to sustain for any company. But I am confident this will continue given the strides we’ve made in our product, with the release of additional functionality at a rapid pace, and with the improved quality of our customer support services, which has resulted in an increase in our net revenue retention rate. As long as we continue this trend, I have no doubt we’ll reach our end goal, but it takes a village. Personally, I look forward to continuing coaching, teaching and mentoring the team while also applying a forward-thinking approach to get to the promised land.
What they do: GoGuardian is an educational software company that aims to protect students in the digital space from harmful and distracting content while also supporting their mental health.
What was the deciding factor for you when you accepted your job at your current company?
GoGuardian stands out as a company where everyone — from our CEO to junior sales reps — understands and believes in our mission to make the internet a more educational and empowering place for students. My first hint was at my interview when I realized GoGuardian employees include many former teachers who just can’t quit education. It’s thrilling to be a product manager at a company with inspirational goals and solid product-market fit. As a product manager, it’s a dream to have true product ownership and make a direct impact on K-12 education.
I have not had to sacrifice professional development to work at this mission-driven company. GoGuardian offers me autonomy, coaching and constant opportunities afforded by our rapid growth. Remarkably, since joining GoGuardian during the COVID-19 lockdown, I have worked with folks on every single team, and on projects from expanding existing customers to incorporating internal research insights into our company strategy. My GoGuardian teammates have relied on our bottom-up creativity and cross-functional flexibility as we have stretched to deliver record growth and customer value this year.
It’s thrilling to be a product manager at a company with inspirational goals and solid product-market fit.”
Looking to the future, what excites you most about where your company is headed?
The nature of my role is to look to the future of the company, which gives me even more excitement for GoGuardian’s plans. We’re growing from a company known for internet filtering to a company that helps students learn. Consider that most features we release impact millions of students and that each customer implementation adds thousands more. As a B2B SaaS company, the scale alone presents juicy challenges — but it’s even more rewarding when we remember that our work makes K-12 digital learning more effective and safe.
GoGuardian’s success depends on every team, not just product development. Our account teams, which notably include many former teachers, bring expertise and compassion to each customer. I also work with data scientists whose models will power the future of our company and researchers whose experiments inspire company strategy. Each employee I’ve met is unfailingly collaborative, approaching each customer relationship or project with a sense of urgency and purpose. I keep telling my professional contacts to apply at GoGuardian because I know their work here will result in real impact.
What they do: FabFitFun is an e-commerce company that delivers subscribers a curated collection of full-size products across beauty, fashion, wellness, home and technology.
As a tenured employee, what has been the biggest reason you’ve stayed at your company so long?
FabFitFun has incredible growth and learning opportunities. I started as an assistant at the company and since day one, I’ve been encouraged to challenge myself by owning projects and to foster my own voice. Everyone at FabFitFun has a hand in the business. One of our company values is “Act Like an Owner” and this resonates with me as I work with my team to build the box and curate the most exciting assortment of merchandise every season. I have onboarded new brands, brought in past member favorites and grown our skincare category overall throughout my time at FFF.
Recently, I was given the opportunity to help launch our new business model, “reFills,” and bring a convenient product replenishment subscription into our members’ lives. With this, I am inspired to keep growing with FabFitFun and look forward to embracing more career-shaping challenges with open arms.
I am inspired to keep growing with FabFitFun and look forward to embracing more career-shaping challenges with open arms.”
Looking to the future, what excites you most about where your company is headed?
I have seen the business evolve significantly throughout my time here at FabFitFun, but the passion behind the assortments and buys has only grown stronger. We have implemented new strategies and enhanced consumer insights and hindsight with how we plan and buy. As these tools have impacted how we think about the business, I am excited about the evolution of our merchandise and our overall enhanced member experience.
In the beauty space, we are focusing on incorporating more clean beauty, Gen Z tailored brands, and to expand our offerings to our diverse membership base in both box and e-commerce. With this, I look forward to using new insights and strategic planning to bring in quality partnerships and tell enriching brand stories.
What they do: Slickdeals is a consumer web and e-commerce platform that brings shoppers together with a common goal of finding the best shopping deals and coupons.
What was the deciding factor for you when you accepted your job at your current company?
There were three really important things I was looking for in my next opportunity and Slickdeals offered all of them. First, I was looking for a company with a healthy culture and work-life balance. Through the interview process, I could see the culture at Slickdeals was extremely supportive, transparent and employee-centric. Second, I wanted to work with leaders and a team that I admired and whom I can learn from. The team at Slickdeals is super smart and thoughtful — not only do they strive to innovate from a product perspective, but they also have a very thoughtful long-term vision of where the company is going.
And lastly, I wanted to work on a product that was doing good for the world. Slickdeals has helped consumers save over $6.8 billion dollars to date as the leading social platform for shopping with the main goal of helping consumers to never have to pay full price while shopping again.
I am thrilled to be on board as Slickdeals goes into the next phase of its product and really look forward to being a part of the product team.”
Looking to the future, what excites you most about where your company is headed?
Slickdeals already has a cult-like following and a very large user base. As director of product, I will be focusing on community and virality — namely product-led growth. I am super excited to help Slickdeals run product experiments and build out a product roadmap that will take us to the next level of growth and community engagement. Slickdeals has a strong vision for the future, which includes loyalty, personalization and much more! I am thrilled to be on board as Slickdeals goes into the next phase of its product and really look forward to being a part of the product team that takes Slickdeals to the next level.
What they do: Zwift is a fitness program that connects cyclists and runners around the world and brings an immersive and engaging experience into training sessions.
What was the deciding factor for you when you accepted your job at your current company?
I had the opportunity to work in a space that combines my personal passion and professional experience. I love racing and have completed three 140.6’s (Ironmans), nine 70.3’s (half-Ironmans), nine full marathons and a bunch of shorter races. These days I’m not racing as much, but I’m still running or cycling almost every day. Fitness is very much a part of my daily life.
A large part of our job in product is to seek, understand and know our customers’ needs, goals and motivations in such a way that we build the best experiences possible for them. To get to do that for Zwift, a product I happily use, motivates and excites me.
We want to make it as frictionless and seamless for everyone, no matter if you’re using it to fit a workout into your busy schedule or gunning for a podium.”
Looking to the future, what excites you most about where your company is headed?
Zwift is growing fast — we’re onboarding new customers every day and more people are learning how to Zwift. We have lots of opportunities to make becoming a Zwifter easier. We work to make it as frictionless and seamless for everyone, no matter if you’re using it to fit a workout into your busy schedule or gunning for a podium. Our mission is, “more people, more active, more often,” and it’s vital that we are “One Zwift For All!”
What they do: TeleSign is a machine learning and security company that works to prevent online fraud to keep companies and their information safe.
As a tenured employee, what has been the biggest reason you’ve stayed at your company so long?
There are three primary reasons why I have been at TeleSign for 10 years. First, the people and culture: I spend most of my time at work, therefore, enjoying the people I work with and the culture they foster is a crucial part of my personal happiness. We have a talented and opinionated group of individuals and although we don’t always agree, it’s done with the utmost respect and the better good of the products we build. From an early-stage startup to where we are today, TeleSign has continued to look for ways to cultivate an inclusive culture across our multiple time zones.
Secondly, the technical challenges. Providing solutions for most of the top web properties globally has come with some interesting scalability challenges over the years. We empowered our engineers to leverage the latest technologies to evolve our architectures. From the early days of single-data center solutions to our multi-region hybrid cloud solutions today, I have been able to grow my technical understanding of how to scale complex distributed systems.
And thirdly, throughout my various roles over the years at TeleSign, I’ve always had a voice in both the technical and product direction of our solutions. Whether it’s new feature development, increasing capacity or high availability of our solutions, I feel my contributions directly impact the company’s bottom line. We also make it a point to acknowledge and reward the individuals and teams responsible for the continued success of the company.
TeleSign is continuing to expand and innovate in our communications and digital identity platforms.”
Looking to the future, what excites you most about where your company is headed?
TeleSign is continuing to expand and innovate in our communications and digital identity platforms. Specifically, in the digital identity space, I am excited about leveraging and growing our large data sets to power more sophisticated machine learning techniques to go beyond our existing fraud solutions today. To achieve this, we will continue to seek top talent and leverage the latest technologies. I am personally looking forward to bringing on new engineers who bring with them a fresh perspective on how we do things today. The technical challenges that lie ahead of us will most certainly continue to challenge me and I am confident I will have fun doing it.
What they do: Boulevard is a beauty software company that provides salons and spas with a scheduling, point-of-sale and conversion platform designed to help automate workflows.
What was the deciding factor for you when you accepted your job at your current company?
When looking for the right company, there are a few key pillars I evaluate, which include everything from the product vision, leadership, growth potential and culture. Boulevard has found a way to check off all those boxes for me.
Having worked at many young companies, I truly believe that Boulevard has successfully built a remarkable product with the right people behind it. This leads to the leadership of the company, which has done a tremendous job of providing transparency while showing support, compassion and trust in their employees.
Finally, the growth potential is endless at this point and the culture just wraps it all together. Collectively, we are a group of ambitious individuals who all are invested in pushing the envelope and truly understand our vision and where we are heading.
Staying innovative, asking questions and continuing to improve allows me to feel excited and grateful to be part of such a great company.”
Looking to the future, what excites you most about where your company is headed?
What excites me most is the direction in which we are headed as a company. Our leadership is keen on making sure we are set up for success on all levels of our business.
Ultimately, we are continuing to build a platform that can make a difference in multiple verticals to come. Staying innovative, asking questions and continuing to improve allows me to feel excited and grateful to be part of such a great company. I know the work I am doing today will have an impact on the future success of the company, which is very rewarding.
What they do: WELL Health offers a proprietary software solution that allows for bi-directional texting to connect patients and providers throughout the care journey.
What was the deciding factor for you when you accepted your job at your current company?
I’ve been involved with startups for the better part of my career and have worked with large enterprise companies that “followed the sun.” Both have their good and bad qualities, but I favor startups because I enjoy the pace and intimacy they promote. Before accepting the offer from WELL Health, I’d also received an offer from a larger public company. Ultimately, the decision became easy based on a few key factors from WELL Health: everyone was extremely personable, the product was viable, I was knowledgeable on the core development stack and the company was financially sound with a lot of room to grow with.
After interviewing, I immediately felt I could contribute and be valued by my potential manager. The culture I experienced right from the beginning was a group of people who cared about the product and their team. WELL Health is a company dedicated to a product and making that product the best in its market.
After interviewing, I immediately felt I could contribute and be valued by my potential manager.”
Looking to the future, what excites you most about where your company is headed?
Currently, the front-end team has been given the task of splitting up the web application into micro-front ends. This work allows us to migrate React class components to functional components with hooks. We’ve also been able to rethink state management and introduce a common state across the micro-front ends. Working on the change has given us the opportunity to take all of the lessons learned and apply them forward to modernize the front-end stack.
Included in this refactoring is a comprehensive approach to standardizing structures and testing. This is the work that excites me the most, the ability to build better and smarter. I’ve been with companies before that concentrate on throwing features into poorly based applications with the mantra “just get it done.” WELL Health is not that company. We get it done, but we also always consider getting it done right.
What they do: GR0 is a digital marketing agency focused on organic growth for direct-to-consumer startups.
What was the deciding factor for you when you accepted your job at your current company?
I worked with one of the GR0 co-founders, Kevin Miller, at a tech startup for several years, and we were completely aligned on our vision for culture and people-first principles. So when I was given the opportunity to build an amazing culture and workplace for him from the ground up, it was a dream job come true!
Our small, super tight management team is 100 percent dedicated to making GR0 amazing.”
Looking to the future, what excites you most about where your company is headed?
At GR0, we place a lot of importance on building automation into all of our systems so that our teams can work efficiently and our internal systems are scalable. Some of the cool stuff coming to the HR side of GR0 in January includes a new payroll and HR platform that houses automation of all-things-onboarding, allowing me to stretch my bandwidth to what would otherwise require two or three support roles.
On the finance side, we are automating the flow from contract signing to new customer setup to automatically creating an invoice means less data entry drag. Part of the magic in building these systems is the team effort to make it happen. Our small, super tight management team is 100 percent dedicated to making GR0 amazing, and working closely together to build an awesome foundation is the icing on the SEO cake!
What they do: Healthtech company divvyDOSE is a home-delivery pharmacy focused on adherence packaging.
What was the deciding factor for you when you accepted your job at your current company?
I was working as a pharmacist and teaching myself to code on the side — but after six years, I was ready for a change. I wanted a job that was exciting and aligned with my values and priorities. I stumbled across divvyDOSE and was so interested in the mission that I had to reach out. So, I was immediately connected to Talha, the CTO, and Jana, the VP of people and culture. After hearing more about divvyDOSE from them, I was sold. So much that I was willing to leave my new niece and nephew and move halfway across the country to Chicago from Seattle.
DivvyDOSE is on a mission to make it easier for patients to take their medications and to, therefore, improve health outcomes. Some of the exact problems that divvyDOSE is fixing are things that I saw every day in my pharmacy career. Additionally, the perks of the job were quite nice: flexibility, remote-friendly and a great office in the River North area, to name a few. I was offered a position with divvyDOSE where I could provide technical support to its pharmacy operations users while they use the software being built by divvyDOSE’s engineering team. This transitioned into being a full-time front-end software engineer! It’s been more than amazing and I am so thankful every day for this opportunity.
We are continuing the mission of helping patients have better health outcomes.”
Looking to the future, what excites you most about where your company is headed?
We are continuing the mission of helping patients have better health outcomes, but now at a much larger scale due to divvyDOSE’s recent acquisition by UnitedHealth Group. We are growing our team in all areas, which is very exciting to see. As a pharmacist myself, I know that pharmacists play an important role as part of a patient’s healthcare team. I’ve been in our pharmacists’ shoes. There are so many manual and repetitive tasks that were a part of the job that take the focus away from the patients. We are getting rid of those! I am most excited to continue building software that supports divvyDOSE’s pharmacists so that they can do their jobs more effectively and provide the best care for patients.
