CodePath EES2024 BILL - BILL’ding Your Future: Why Company Culture Should Be Your Top Priority

There we go. Hello. Hello.

Hi, everybody. Hope you’re excited. I don’t know about you, but that intro, super cool.

Super cool. Awesome. Well, welcome to the breakout session, Building Your Future.

Why company culture should be your top priority, hosted by Bill. Bill has a really special place in my heart. For those of you who maybe don’t know, I’m a former Bill employee.

So, really excited to be here hosting this session. And hope you’re just as excited as well to hear from the team. We’re excited to have you join us today.

I’ll be introducing your speakers in just a minute. But first, I wanted to share just a couple of reminders for everybody. First and foremost, make sure to utilize that chat function to have those conversations, share your thoughts during the session and make sure you keep your messages relevant to the topic of the session.

The presenters and the speakers can see your chat. Our team will be monitoring the chat and questions may be answered live during the session. If you have questions during the session, please use the Q&A feature in Airme.

Following the session as well, we’ll ask that you complete a brief feedback survey. Really, your feedback is super super important to us and you know, we want to make sure that we take that into account. And with your reminders out of the way, I’m going to be introducing our speakers today who will be presenting.

I’m joined by Savannah Verbus and Savannah Devani. Welcome and we look forward to hearing from both of you. Just to quickly introduce both of them.

Savannah Verbus is passionate about connecting people with opportunities that align with their career goals and core values. Her expertise spans communication, networking, process building, and technical recruiting. She’s got a strong focus on diversity and inclusion.

Her mission is to transform lives by finding the perfect fit between talent and company culture. With a background in business admin and a degree in organizational leadership from Arizona State University, Sav understands the critical role that the right company culture plays in helping you thrive in your career. I’m also joined by another Savannah, Savannah Devourney, who is a staff software engineer at Bill, where she’s worked nearly seven years after starting as a level one engineer following her time at Hackbrite, an allwomen’s coding boot camp before transitioning to engineering.

Savannah spent 12 years in product management focusing on mindfulness and cognitive sciences in health tech. And at Bill, she thrives in the company’s inclusive culture, contributing by mentoring others, leading ERG’s, championing val championing values like fun. Outside of work, Savannah’s played field hockey for over 30 years, representing team USA at the Pan-American Games in 2023 and World Cup in 2022.

She also founded a San Francisco field hockey club that has won three national championships. Everybody give it up to Savannah Squared. Send those emojis in the chat.

Welcome. Welcome. Ah, thank you, Daniel, for that delightful introduction.

I am so thrilled to be here today. Y’all are our future and I’m just so excited to play a small part along your journey and to be part of this future and to have you in it. So I’m going to take the stage here and go through the the presentation.

I think I’m still sharing, but I’m not quite sure since I’m sharing the presentation, but I guess I need to reshare. I’m going to select something, pop it on the screen, and my partner in crime here, the second Savannah, as I affectionately call her, the cooler Savannah. Oh, there we go.

It’s already on. Okay. We’ll be here along the journey helping to answer some questions in the Q&A, and we’ll pop back in when we’re doing more Q&A at the end and inviting more discussion.

So just to add a few more pieces of color to some of the the delightful parts of the introduction that Danielle just went through. Hackbrite was a was all women’s coding boot camp and it was really instrumental in my ability to safely break through into engineering. I was pretty terrified after spending 12 years in product management.

It it was it was very nerve-wracking for me. You know what is what is it like to be in engineering. You hear all these horror stories.

And I was I I consider myself very lucky in the end to have found myself at Bill. You know they the the the culture and this is really the the key thing that I’m hoping that you’ll walk away with today. The pace, the shape, the rate of your career development can dramatically be influenced by the cultures that you find yourself within.

And that is very rings very true for me in my personal background going from a level one engineer to a staff engineer in just 5 years. So really crediting the the culture and it’s something that I pride myself being able to now actively contribute back to that rich and vi vibrant culture that we have at Bill. Doing things like being able to participate as an active member in our our queer community, our ERG.

Also ERG’s specifically focused for women in engineering where we help the women skill up and learn new skills like like an AI workshop that we just hosted. If you come join us, you can participate in those fun things. The field hockey thing is a real fun fact.

A lot of the things that I cover today are also really influential in the intentional way in which we set up and what we try to encourage within that team and is really foundational for the winning culture that we’ve established at that team. Also not listed here, but I live in San Francisco with my wife and our three fur babies. You can’t see them, but they are on my mug.

This one is Blue. He’s the leader of the pack. This is Bingo.

He’s our firstborn poodle boy. And then this is Billy, the last edition. We love them very much.

Okay, so let’s get into it. First, a little bit about who Bill is. We’re financial automation platform.

We help small businesses. Small businesses are the bedrock of our society. We help them manage their cash flow.

We have about 1% of our the US GDP flowing through our platform annually. So, pretty big scale. We have a a technically technical architecture.

We have a web app two mobile apps. We’ve acquired a few companies in the mix. So there’s a few there’s multiple pieces but it is one unified platform and under the hood there’s a lot of back-end microservices that are supporting really complex workflows complex processes a lot of AI running under the hood to power that automation that that our customers are experiencing in the workflows for paying their bills and sending their invoices to the customer to their customers and really relevant I think for the discussion today and through my for my journey at bill is you know don’t like I I love what we do at Bill and the connection to serving customers small small businesses in particular is definitely motivational for me but I come from the world like my real heart is actually in in health tech and health sciences and my big mission in in life is to try to reduce human suffering as much as possible and you know financial tech wasn’t really like on my bingo card for my career and I I have been here for seven years and it’s it’s really what we’re going to talk about today that has been instrumental in me staying.

I I definitely connect with our product and our and our our mission, don’t get me wrong, but I really wanted to highlight as the key part in in my decision to continue to stay at Bill. So, okay, let’s let’s get into culture. Like first a brief segue into why culture is so important.

And I have up on the screen here a beautiful picture of vibrant bacteria. Not all bacteria growing in a petri dish dish looks as pretty as this, but this is by far the most beautiful. And I love this because my original field of study I I had to have my bachelor of science in microbiology in immunology.

And this this bacterial culture is growing. A a culture in in microbiology refers to a community of bacteria that’s growing and thriving on a substrate designed to nourish them. And I love that it’s called a culture in in in microbial sciences because it’s the perfect metaphor for the the culture that we all know and we all associate with with the environments that we find ourselves in throughout our lives and what are the norms and and expectations within a culture.

So, it’s it’s really the key takeaway that I hope you leave with is, you know, just like bacteria can flourish in the right environment, people can flourish in the right environment. And toxic elements within that environment can also kill and stifle growth as well. So, I drop little droplets of penicellin on there and you’re going to see the bacteria shrink.

You’re going to see holes in here where the bacteria can’t grow. And it’s that career growth that is dramatically influenced by the right culture and the importance of that and really what I hope that you’ll take away if nothing else from today. So let’s break this down a little bit more just in terms of like what like what is it like what’s the definition of not bacterial culture but the one that we know and associate.

It’s really it’s far far more than any mission statement or values that a company posts on its wall or has on its website or its job descriptions. It’s really the the everyday lived values and actions, the behaviors, the unwritten norms and those shared values, the things that are dictating how things get done, how people interact at a company, how decisions get made. It’s really that it’s the pulse.

It’s the pulse of an organization. It’s this invisible force shaping what’s what’s truly rewarded and also what’s tolerated within any given organization. But it’s interesting that the word itself comes from a Latin word that means to tend to the earth and grow.

And culture as we know it can be exactly that. It’s the environment that either nurtures your growth or stifles your growth. And any given culture, a good culture or a bad culture is something that can dramatically influence the shape, the pace, the trajectory of your career.

So that’s really the the key takeaway that I hope I hope that you’ll you’ll take from today is that the impact of this and to further reinforce the impact of this because I’m a total nerd and scientist at heart. So I had to bring along some of my favorite research studies from behavioral health and sciences here. You it’s just like breaking it down just a bit more concretely here.

So ultimately culture is an emergent phenomena. It it is reflective of what a company values what and what a company values ultimately is reflective of what’s get rewarded what gets rewarded and what isn’t tolerated at a company. And that in turn that fusion of all of those phenomenas results in you know what’s expected what are the norms that exist within an organization and what’s expected of you because those norms exist.

And while we like we’d like to think that we’re all in the driver’s seat for any given moment, my dis my behavior is reflective of like my own personality and like who I am and like I’m totally in the driver’s seat here. Expectations from the people around you can have a profound impact on shaping your lived reality. So, these are just some fun groundbreaking research to just really hone in on this point.

Expectations from others, expectations from your community and even the expectations that you have of yourself can dramatically influence your lived reality. So expectations from others. This was a groundbreaking study in the late60s and it has stuck around because it’s been so impactful in in educational sciences.

But it was the the the premise of the study was so simple. It was it was randomizing totally random breaking students in a classroom into labeled as poor performers or good performers and giving those labels and assignments to teachers and doing nothing else for the year. Allowing students to go on and perform accordingly and and go on and live their learn experiences.

And the the simple fact that the teachers knew that assignment, that random assignment, impacted and influenced the way that those teachers showed up for those students and actually resulted in hard outcomes of those students being randomly assigned into these groups actually performing better or worse based off of that random assignment. So this is the this is the really the foundational first first research study that coined the term this this self-fulfilling prophecy effect. It’s lovingly referred to as the pig pigmon effect.

It’s it’s the term comes from Greek mythology where a famous a sculptor fell in love with this sculpture of this beautiful woman that he had created and wished so badly for her to be real that he was having a hard time falling in love with any other real woman. So Aphrodite granted him this this wish and fulfilled his expectation and she she was turned turned into a real woman. So that also shows up within.

So that’s like one-on-one relationships between people. But within communities, the health of communities in public health, there’s standardized ways to measure both the trust as well as the the the social cohesion that exists within a group within communities of people. That can be neighborhoods, it can be place just places where you live or exist or show up in the world.

And the impact there being that that both the health and the longevity, people are healthier, but they also live longer when they’re in these communities where the norm is trust and social cohes cohesion. And then lastly, just in terms of your own lived experience, the expectations that you have on yourself and the beliefs that you have in your own head and how it shows up and results in physiological differences of how you experience the world. And this was some groundbreaking research from one of my favorite researchers out of Stanford, Kelly McGonagle, led a lot of these studies where there was just looking at breaking people into two two categories based off of how they believed stress impacted them.

If you had the belief that stress was can be good for you and people that believe that stress can can often be bad for you, break those two people out, follow them, track them through stressful situations and their their lived physiological experience of stress, the actual cortisol that’s flowing through their blood flow differs based off of those circumstances. So just just the way that you think and the expectations that you have of yourself and the world can dramatically influence the the your lived reality in the end. And so bringing it and tying it back to the importance of work culture and being intentional about finding finding the right culture generally like the communities that you find yourself in across the board are important.

Relationships across the board are important, but the work the work cultures that you found yourself in are probably the most important because the average person spends 19% of their total life working. It’s the close it’s the it’s the highest conscious activity with only sleeping being the the one that falls behind your time spent at work. So choosing the right culture is not just about the type of experience that you want to have.

Like do do you want to have an enjoyable experience in in this in your working days? Like of course like everyone wants that. But more importantly, it’s about your career growth.

That the culture that you choose, the one that you choose to immerse yourself in can shape the direction, the pace of your career. And in the right culture, you have the ability to grow and to thrive. And in the wrong one, that can be stifled, but even worse, your mental health could suffer as a result.

So, the importance of finding the right work culture being paramount. So, let’s take a a bit a bit of a step back and just ask basic questions about culture and how it emerges at organizations. So culture is really a byproduct.

It’s an artifact. It is something that results from the collective characteristics of the people and the relationships between people within that organization. So even if you’re not intentional about posting your values on the wall and trying to shape the culture in a specific direction, culture will emerge.

Just getting a group of people together culture will emerge. So over time, a company shapes that whether they’re intentional or not about it, that the things that over time choose to be rewarded and the things that tend to be punished or not tolerated that that influences over time the the the culture that emerges and it is something that emerges and reveals itself to you over time. So, it’s not something that you can kind of step into and get a pulse like on day one at an organization and it’s also something that’s hard to assess for in an interview.

But that’s the whole part of today that we we will guide you through some exercises because it’s worth trying. It’s definitely worth trying to get a sense to of of that that a company’s values and the behaviors that are rewarded becomes what’s expected of you. And as we’ve seen it, expectations have incredible power to shape your behavior, but everyone around you.

And then lastly here, it’s the it’s it’s probably pretty it’s obvious in in in a lot of ways, but leaders at an organization have such an outsized impact on the how this how a culture culture emerges over time because they have so much power. They can choose and influence what gets rewarded. They’re looked to to set the example of, you know, what values are they are they promoting?

What are they but more importantly what are they living in their everyday actions and during times of stress in particular? Like how do they show up when push comes to sub shove? Do they do they demonstrate those values when things get stressful or do they abandon them and take a different path?

So let’s take a look at some examples because it’s helpful to get a little bit more concrete here. So these are these are the values that we articulate at Bill. Values are really at the heart of heart of any culture.

It’s important though to note that these are Bill’s explicitly articulated values. So they, you know, they definitely, I’ll give you examples of how they definitely show up in the way that employees have lived experiences at Bill. But there’s also ones that are valued that aren’t listed here.

And I want to give you a few few concrete examples. So how how they show up at Bill. So the probably the most powerful one that I can reflect on in my almost seven years at Bill you may have heard about the Silicon Valley bank closures.

Bill was dramatically impacted by that. We use a a network of banks to hold funds in trust for our customers and the payment rails that power our product depend on the these banks being stable and online and being able to move money for us. During that crisis it was o over a few it was several days you know four or five days in the end where we didn’t know if the money that we were holding in trust for some of our customers at Silicon Valley Bank was going to be able to be recovered.

We’re talking in order of magnitude of 300 million plus dollars that could have been impacted. And there was a moment where we did not know if that would be able to be recovered, but we took a bet and ultimately, and this was reflected from our leaders, both both our CEO and our CFO and President John and Renee, our CEO, made the decision and collectively the company made the decision to embody one of our values is dedicated passionate, sorry, passionate and accountable for our customers. That’s really what that value is, you know, ultimately means within within bill.

That our customers are paramount and that, you know, our customers were trusting us to move their money and to make their payments on time. And there was a moment where we didn’t know if we were going to be able to recover that money, but we made the decision that it didn’t matter and that we were going to stand behind our customers and back them no matter what it meant for them. So, that’s definitely an an example.

And you’ll see when we go through some tips and tricks for how to interview and get a sense of how how to get a pulse of how companies and and leaders handle times of stress as as a recommended example. Probably my favorite value here is the fun value. I I love showing up as a clown at work.

I love pranking my colleagues. I also just love the power of humor to diffuse tense and stressful situations. So that I get to exist in in an environment that embodies that and encourages that and values that is really passionate.

I’m passionate about that. Probably the most impactful for my career has been the humble value that Bill has. It the ways that it shows up as especially for an early engineer.

You know, when I was terrified being a level one engineer coming into my first job at Bill, I was surrounded by egoless people who were more than happy to help me along the way. They did not make me feel dumb. I no question was not valid.

And I had a safe space from the get-go and it was palpable from the start because of that that egoistence and that humble attitude that we encourage we select for and it’s really the social norm that egoless developer is always I have many examples that I’m so so glad that I had along along my career. And then so like just taking a look at like what does Bill do and what you know as examples of like how how can companies reward different values as they present within a population. So I’ll give you a few examples of how we do that at bill.

We have byianual performance review cycles. You you could probably imagine what they’re like. It’s a lot of written you you know I have a form there’s four big questions like how did you perform what were some challenges how did you work through them and then what values at bill did you embody this this period this cycle and the real estate the you know a quarter of the real estate of what you can reflect on and write within your assessment even if you’ve had a bad period a bad six months the the reward that’s placed on that for being able to to demonstrate that you lived one of our values is significant.

There’s also annual awards that our company gives. One of them is called the top bill. So it’s the top performer across a variety of business units at Bill.

But handinhand with that award is a really special award. It’s called the Patty Award and it’s given out to the the group of employees across business lines that best demonstrate the bill values and embody the bill values and it’s named after a a colleague I never got the chance to meet her but she had cancer and passed away and this award carries on in her honor. So tangible rewards a big example is you know that one of our one of our values is accountable accountable to our customers.

There was there was a big push earlier this year to ask employees to go above and beyond to serve our customers with some particular deliverables that we were needing to get into the hands of our of our customers. We’re passionate and accountable to our customers and the company was really trying to rally around an extra push to make that happen. You know and we’ll talk about this a little bit more but in toxic cultures pushes like that can happen and and people can burn out and it’s you know just a kind of a neverending ask of like how high can you jump and Bill rewarded that extra push that extra dedication that was all require required from us with tangible rewards.

So, we all got a cash, every single person at the company had a cash bonus at the end of that period. And we took a whole week off in the middle of the summer. The company shut down and we had an extra week of PTO.

It was pretty incredible that Bill would do that. And just also reflective of, you know, there’s there’s things that you’ll want to assess for that aren’t written here. You know, these are just the articulated values.

And we’re going to go through an exercise to help you identify your personal values, but that’s really where you want to hone in on. And it’s like, you know, maybe maybe health is a personal value of yours, but that’s not something necessarily the company’s going to put on the wall. But it’s something that is a personal value of yours and it will it be amplified within the culture that you find yourself with with will anything be in conflict of it?

So that’s really where we want to what get to at the end of the day is identifying that alignment and helping you find the right culture which perfectly leads us into the exercise. You know, if you ultimately that yes, the goal is to find the right culture, but as we’ll go into after this exercise, there’s a baseline of a safe culture, but really the ultimate goal is to make sure that you find the right culture that reflects and amplifies your values and and make sure that’s not in conflict of any of the values. So your own personal core values can be revealed as well.

And they are those things that you may not know because you haven’t done an exercise of trying to identify them, but these are the core values that are driving your compass throughout life. So, what direction you’re headed, what’s underlying, you know, why you feel good in any given moment or some peak experience, like why did it feel good? Or during a conflicting moment, why does it feel so bad?

It’s really because of these core alignments that you hold inside of you that may have not revealed themselves to you yet. And making them explicit is so important because it’s the first step to really understand like, you know, what what what are you all about? How can you get them to reveal themselves to you?

So, we’ll spend a little bit of time here. It’s something that you’ll take away with. I I hope that this gu small guided step that we’ll do right here is something that you’ll you’ll be able to follow follow through on not just like today, not just next week, but like regular check-ins.

So, the the exercise flows something like this, right? There’s a list. It’s probably small to see, but here’s a list.

It’s a starting list. Values are like concepts, beliefs. There’s they’re concrete things that guide behavior.

And things that get rewarded. And this list just serves as a starting point. There may be words on here that you resonate with your personal values that aren’t listed, but the exercise is definitively not going through and just selecting.

Ultimately, you should select, you know, it’d be like three to five is kind of a good number to identify for yourself. But definitely don’t start with just like circling them on the list. If you just if the frame of the exercise is just looking at this list and then identifying what resonates with you, you’re the the guide and the principle in that moment is going to be you know what looks good for me, what what what should society dictates would be good for me to select.

It really needs to be personalized for you. So there’s a few frames. There’s two frames I’ll take you through by which you can you can the lenses that you can look through and reflect on to try to identify and have these reveal themselves for you.

The first is to think and reflect on those those peak experiences in your life. So think back to like where was I the most confident? Where did I feel the most powerful?

Where was I just like feeling like I was I was the best version of myself. And that can be that can be a little moment, it could be a day, it could be an hour, it could be a conversation, it could be a big moment, it could be a big accomplishment. It could be like a giant milestone in your life.

So the scale really doesn’t matter, but it’s that framing peak experience and and the real the real question for you is, you know, what were you feeling? What was happening? And what values do you think were being honored in those particular moments?

So that’s the first framing, reflective, but also something to carry forward when you catch yourself feeling joy in the future. Just ask yourself what what do I value right now that’s being met? What need did I have that’s being that’s being met here?

So the second lens is the opposite. So thinking thinking about times that you felt frustrated or annoyed and it can be it could again be it could be a tiny moment. It could be a tiny interaction with a particular person that lasted five minutes or it could be like a really long period where you were pretty depressed for a few months or really just just struggling, not the best version of yourself.

Something was happening in your lived experience that was resulting in you having an unmet need. And so the the core question there is, you know, what were you feeling? What was going on?

And what do you think that reflects for the values that may have been suppressed or maybe in conflict in that moment? So those are the two big frames. Definitely take this exercise away.

It’s something that you can tuck away in your heart and do whenever you’re feeling big big things or small things, positive or negative veilances and really start to ask yourself like what’s going on then? What are the themes, right? Like I like I’m I’m cons consistently seeing that like, you know, health is showing up for me as or independence is showing up for me or autonomy, like I re really value being able to to do things on my own terms and when someone’s coming in and micromanaging me that’s like causing a lot of conflict for me and this style is really not working for me.

This culture is not working for me. So when you have a stronger sense of for you as a person, as an individual, what are those values that are guiding your lived experiences, you can then start to be intentional about looking for the communities that align with that? You know, it’s not about like the list that you that you come up with.

It’s not going to match what someone puts on a wall, right? It may, probably not. And the the real the real purpose here though is to make sure that you are not in conflict with any of your personal values and that the environments that you choose may have an amplifying effect and may allow you to be the best versions of your the best version of yourself.

Okay. So, first a note before we we move on to more tips and tricks for interviewing and trying to identify and find and get matched with that great culture. It’s a this is a really really important slide.

Toxic cultures are not I mean they are cultures but they they’re they’re they’re a non-starter. This is the first level of teasing out within an interview that you that you really need to do. And this is really hard to interview for.

You know oftentimes toxic workplaces will have great values posted on the wall. Unfortunately, I have been part of some of those organizations and it just takes a while for them to reveal themselves to you, right? Like you may not have been maybe your first working experience and you may just think this is the norm.

People often are in con are in conflict with that realization that they’re in a toxic situation. So like even in an interview, they may not feel like they can they may be conflicted to be honest, right? They’re they don’t want to tell you the truth.

They’re they’re being brought in that interview to try to recruit you. You know, that’s part of their job right now. So this is really hard to tease out.

So it’s really about it’s really about like what what is not said in an interview that can help you tease this out. But let’s just look at some hallmarks, right? Like what are the attributes?

Like you probably have heard the term, oh that culture is like super toxic. Like what does that even mean? Just so we can get better at spotting it.

Like here’s some of the like actual fundamentals like concrete examples. So psychological safety is this con concept where just basically employees feel safe. They they feel safe to speak up.

They don’t have a fear of punishment or retaliation when they speak up. And just generally people feel like they can express their ideas. That’s like the core of psychological safety.

Transparency communication’s open for information flows freely. Leadership has clear expectations and decisions that they that they make and communicate clearly. Hallmark of healthy culture.

There’s a core a core support for growth of you as a person and also as teams. So failure is not seen as as something that is it’s it’s a a growth mindset, right? It’s a learning.

It’s not seen as something to punish. Failure is seen as learning. Employees are encouraged to to develop, take on new challenges, take on risks.

And then there’s this core aspect of just base human respect and inclusion. So diversity of thought is valued, diversity of people is valued and is is displayed in the lived reality of the culture. All voices are are heard and respected.

So on the flip side, when a culture tips into being toxic, there’s a fear of speaking up. There’s that there’s a fear that there’s going to be retribution or even worse humiliation if if an employee speaks up. I always like that there’s a famous phrase in organizational psychology like praise in public criticize in private you know is is is that happening is is criticism happening in in public.

Can often cause humiliation and and create a a self spiraling culture, l a total lack of transparency where on the flip side there was clear transparency. Maybe leaders are withholding information, maybe tough conversations get avoided, things get sugarcoated, things feel vague. You, you know, you’re often walking around just not understanding things.

Everyone’s not really understanding things and there’s no common shared understanding. People tend to blame each other. So when when mistakes are made, they they’re they’re punished.

There’s not that growth mindset. Mistakes are seen as something that needs to be punished, not as the tre treasure trove that they are, which is for learning. That’s a hallmark.

Competition and burnout. Employees may get pitted against each other for competition. This is really a hallmark of Microsoft and the in the early and beyond.

This is a hallmark of their culture. People feel overworked, people feel burned out, there’s no real release, there’s no you know peak peak and and relief of workloads and then just a core aspect of disrespect. So there’s this core lack of inclusivity.

It may be it may be subtle maybe it may be overt signs of disrespect is is another big red flag. So that’s your first task, you know, ruling out toxic culture from the gate. It’s absolutely non-negotiable.

It’s not just about limiting your career growth. It’s your mental health. And it’s really hard to identify in an interview, but it’s worth trying.

So I think, you know, here I have some examples of of questions that are concrete that you could ask within an interview just as like a start, like a baseline. But I think the most important part here is that you just pay attention to how you how you feel in an interview. You know, throughout throughout the interview process, were did were the instructions clear?

Were your expectations did they match what the reality was? Did you feel respected through the interview? There’s a horrible part of engineering interview culture that can feel like hazing.

That is not normal. You should feel respected and and it should be enjoyable to go through an exercise. The interviewer should be freely helping you succeed.

You know, there’s this this common saying, you probably have heard this the saying hurt people hurt. And the same is the same is true, right? Like with anything like disrespected people disrespect.

That person’s probably really struggling and being disrespected themselves in this toxic workplace. So, that’s probably the biggest example to look out for. But here’s here’s just some some concrete like like how’s how’s feedback typically given at a company.

This really gets into like our are our voices actually being heard? Are employees being listened to or is it just all show? I can give you an example at bill of a culture survey that goes out twice a year.

It is a chance for employees to vocalize what’s working and what’s not working. And the results are poured over painstakingly at all levels of leadership to try to understand what needs to change. And things change over time.

I’ve been there for seven years. So I’ve seen things change as a result of this survey. And it’s that that cycle, the the listening, the ultimate listening that happens from the feedback that results in change.

Employees aren’t afraid of speaking up and they trust that their organization will do something with that information. Another one, just describe how people are encouraged to speak up or challenge ideas. So is there a you know fear of retribution here?

They may struggle to find an example. How does the team handle mistakes and failures? So what hap like describe a failure like when does your team fail?

Like all teams fail like through their time and if they can’t give you an example that speaks of itself, right? Like they should know an example and and not be afraid to tell you how it was handled at a company because it should be a learning and they should be able to express how they adapted from it. You could ask explicitly what what kind of behaviors are not tolerated.

That can also help you get into you know how how are things course corrected? Was any disrespect as an example tolerated? How are decisions typically communicated from leadership to the to the rest of the company?

Like really honing in on the outsized influence of of leaders at a company and then how they transparently communicate. Is there a culture of of trust? And then an example of a tough decision that leadership had to make recently that if anyone were to ask me that in an interview, I would highlight that Silicon Valley Bank example.

It’s probably the toughest decision decision I’ve seen our leaders have to make. And through that, they they held our values tight. But if the answers are vague or leaders may be sugar coating, that’s also that’s also a red flag.

Okay, so that’s like table stakes. It’s like non-negotiable. It’s definitely goal number one is to tease that out.

But then like let’s get like further nuanced, right? Like what other aspects about the culture can you assess from an interview and get more nuanced and see and make sure that it it aligns with your with your personal values. So there’s a difference between what a company says it values and what actually happens in day-to-day.

And that’s really your goal, right? Like it’s the articulated versus the values in action. Like it’s really the values in action that’s the the treasure trove for you.

Culture again is something that reveal reveals itself to you. So it’s this this process of revelation that you’re going through with your interviewer. Also just fundamentally remember that in your interview you you are interviewing the company and the people as much as they’re interviewing you.

So I’m sure that you’ve heard that over and over again, but I just fundamental point that these are expected of you to get a sense of try to get a sense of how the company really operates. So, yeah, it’s easy it’s really easy to communicate the it’s easy to put things on a wall, but how are things lived out every day? What values are rewarded?

What values are do they match what’s articulated? What’s tolerated but never spoken about? It’s really what you’re trying to do as part of this this exercise.

Some some some practical tips too and some in the pre-work that you’re doing for your interview. Make sure you research everyone on your panel and come in prepared with questions that are specific to them. So maybe someone’s been there many years and had many promotions like that’s definitely an opportunity to try to understand the gold and you know what what was how did you get promoted like tell me about like what was that you demonstrated or you know what is common in the in the people that do get promoted what’s common like what what are typically typical of the things you see in engineering types of engineers that get promoted this also applies.

It’s not noted here, but research the company as well. In addition to the people that you’re interviewing with and in addition to the the base the basics of the company, like what they do, how they do it, what their product is, what their market is, try to get a sense of when did they go through what seemed from the outside like a period of probably high stress. Maybe their stock price went down one day.

Like look at the news for those events. Like maybe someone wrote about them in an analysis that you could look up like what are what are some periods of struggle? Did they did they acquire a company and then it it didn’t end up working out?

Did they just acquire a company because that that alone can be very stressful? And and use that information to help ask very tailored questions like tell me what that was like like going through that like what was that experience? How were you know how did that show up for you?

Is a simple open-ended question. And also remember the role of of of leaders and how outsized it is in defining culture. So gearing questions to trying to understand how leaders respond.

Did they stick to their core values? And then also something that’s not here is companies that value diversity typically have employee resource groups. So, you may want to ask like, "Hey, is there is there some type of like black community or queer community and employee resource group at the company that you could hook me up with?" I’d love to talk to someone that’s that’s part of that that’s a member of that that organization.

We have official programs at Bill to do just that. And so, that’s really the goal. Like, it’s like is your goal is is the culture healthy?

Will it amplify your personal values? Importantly, will it conflict with any of your personal values? And just generally, like, is it gonna is it going to bring out the best of you in the the best of you every day?

So, here’s some here’s some examples. I won’t go into these specifically, but these I feel like are some of them are are are gold. I really love the what’s been a low light during your time here and how did the company support you through it.

I think that, you know, everyone goes through a challenging personal period or maybe it’s a challenging time at the company as well, but like there’s always an example of that and fundamentally how the employees respected through that process and how they they held a core value somewhere around you that that was fueling their reason for maybe taking some time off and was that in conflict with how the employee was treated and the culture in the And that’s a good one. Also like what’s what’s the like on the flip side like what’s been your what’s been your highlight of your time here? Can you share like what are you most proud of?

It you know have you have you been doing the best work of your life at this company? Like is your lived experience amplified by your your personal values and is that brought out here? So those are just some examples.

I think you’ll have these slides to take away. Those those will be in here for you. This is just some practical tips that I hope empower you as as we walk away together from from from here.

But before we before we wrap up, I wanted to end with a really fun story. It involves a computer program. So we’re we’re all in engineering.

Let’s show me the code. Show me the code for this moral code. There is code for this moral code.

This was a winning computer program. It was a famous competition that a political scientist held in the 1970s to try to identify if we if we were to pit computer programmers, computer programs together and go through repeated rounds of the prisoners dilemma, what program would win? What strategy would win?

For those that don’t know, the prisoners dile dilemma is a famous psychological experiment, thought experiment where the premise is basically like you and your your your partner just committed a crime together and you’re you’re held up in the interview room that you’re separated and you have options. You can either choose to both cooperate, like if you you don’t know what the other person is doing, but if you both cooperate, you get a lighter sentence. You both get a lighter sentence.

But if one person cooperates and the other one betrays, the one that cooperated gets the maximum sentence, the betrayer gets to go free. And if both betray, then they both get the heaviest maximum sentence. So that’s the dilemma.

The dilemma is like, do you trust this person that you just committed this crime with? Do you trust them enough to to cooperate knowing that the like the betrayal in the end could cost you? So that was the setup like repeated rounds of the prisoner’s dilemma and like what program had the like had the lightest sentence at the end of the day like won the game.

And this winning strategy I find so inspirational because it’s so it was it was the simplest that was submitted. It’s called tit fortat. It’s the simplest, like smallest lines of code.

And its premise is that it starts by cooperating. That’s its first choice. It leans into trust.

It starts with cooperating and then in every subsequent round, it just did what the what the last player did. So, if the if the player cooperated, it cooperated. If it didn’t cooperate, it didn’t cooperate.

So it would it would betray you if you betrayed but only once. There was an aspect of the program that had it was short-term memory. It had forgiveness built into the model.

So it was a generous forgiving tit fortat program. And like the this is really what I wanted I wanted to leave you with this this also very cool fact that I have found through this computer program and there’s a great radio lab episode about this. If you look up radio lab axle rod or tit for tat like it should it should come up.

But you know in today’s world we often like we we equate strength with being assertive, aggressive, competitive, even cutthroat. And this shows and I think the winning strategies in life show that it’s this counterintuitive idea but there’s a power in leading with trust. It’s not a weakness.

It’s It really relates back to expectations, right? Like when you treat a person as the version of them that you want them to be, not necessarily who they are, you may be like in conflict and being challenged by this person, but how you show up for them. Do you lean into trust and kindness even when it’s hard?

That expectation signals to them that, hey, I I I trust you. Like I trust you to be kind. I’m kind and I don’t know what you’re going through, but like that’s what I’m starting with.

That person can live up to that reality and you can profoundly impact not only your experience, but the experience of the people around you. And I just think it’s a powerful ending message here that we talked a lot about group dynamics and like the importance of the the group that you find yourself in and the culture, but there’s also this power of your influence on your everyday moments and the power that you have as a person to influence people around you. So with that, I just wanted to say y’all are our future.

So excited for the future with you in it. Please connect me, connect with me on LinkedIn. Don’t hesitate to reach out.

I’d love to be a small part of your journey, whether that is at Bill or anywhere. Thank you so much for having me. And I think I’ll turn it over to the other cooler Sav to talk about our internships at Bel.

Not cooler, but Sav, thank you. That was so awesome. I definitely just enjoyed learning from you as well.

So thanks for sharing all of your perspectives and your experience here at Bill. We are kind of getting close to time, so going to kind of breeze over this. If you guys are interested in seeing the open roles that we have, please go to our booth.

We have people that are going to be there for the company connection hours too to answer any questions that you guys may have. We’ll also have engineers that’ll be there from our org. So you can ask any of your questions.

I don’t think we quite have time for Q&A. But yes, like Sav said, feel free to reach out and connect. And then, also don’t hesitate to check us out at the booth.

And thank you guys all for for being here. Cool. I know it sounds kind of silly, but check in to this QR code.

If you don’t check in here and you apply, I won’t know that though like that you got your your application came from this event. We like we love applications that come from events that we’ve done like this. So it might seem redundant.

It’s definitely super important. So check in here. This QR code can also be found on the banner in our c on our booth and then I sent the link in the chat here.

So with that I’ll let Daniel close us out. Awesome. Awesome.

Wow, what a presentation. Did anyone else get chills during it? Just me?

I hope not. I think everyone else was feeling the vibes. I saw the chat.

Everybody’s really into it. Thank you so so so much to our sound squared duo here that for such an amazing presentation and engaging discussion. Please drop your appreciation as well in the chat and they have a company booth.

So definitely like they mentioned go visit them. Continue the conversation and chat with them during those networking breaks. And you know, to close us out, I’ll send us off to a brief video from our host, Bobby Doris.

Thanks everyone for being here. Thank you for joining us in this session. I got some information before you leave.

It says, "Please take a moment to complete a brief survey to share your feedback. Remember how valuable feedback is. I’m trying to come back three years in a row and it’s all based on feedback, right?

To see what comes up next, I want you to head back to the main stage and check out the schedule. See you soon in the next set of sessions.